


Your Wildest Dreams

by GrumpyGhostOwl



Series: Battle of the Planets: 2163 [31]
Category: Battle of the Planets, Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Psychological Trauma, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyGhostOwl/pseuds/GrumpyGhostOwl
Summary: Have you ever wondered what life might have been like if you’d made a different choice at a crucial juncture?





	1. Domestic Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Katblu42 for beta reading.

 

“Anyone home?” The house had that feel to it that only an empty house can achieve. Without ears to absorb it, the query seemed to hang in the air. Even the dog and the domestic service robot were conspicuous by their absence.  
  
David Anderson shut the connecting door from the garage behind him and made his way into the gleaming kitchen. The refrigerator, despite its size, was almost invisible under a mass of paper and magnets, the latter holding the former in place. The paper, ranging from crisp white acid-free cartridge to old and yellowing butcher’s paper was covered in drawings. The latest were skilful renderings in pencil, charcoal and pastels, the earliest having been daubed in crayon and finger paint. The newer drawings had the neatly pencilled initials, ‘KA’ in the bottom right corner alongside the date. The older ones had the name, ‘Keyop,’ written in the hands of various teachers, and later the artist himself. They all depicted animals and birds.  
  
The kitchen had that smell that kitchens get when someone has done almost all the preparation for a meal then put everything away and cleaned up, that not-quite-cooking smell of vegetable peelings and sliced raw onions. Anderson left the kitchen and headed for the study. He put his briefcase down by his desk and unbuttoned his overcoat before slipping it off his shoulders and draping it over his left arm. A wall panel in one corner of the room was covered in children’s drawings, but these were of a different kind. Most of them contained messages:  
  
_‘Thank you Dr Bob and Dr David. Now I can run and play soccer. Love Erika.’_  
  
_‘Deer Dr David I can wolk agan. Mom and Dad are hapy. I am hapy to. Simon.’_  
  
_‘To Doctr Andrson. This is me beting my sistr at hop scoch. Thank yuo, Taylah.’_  
  
_‘Dear Dr David and Dr Bob, here is a picture of me without my wheelchair. Thanks for everything, love from Daniel.’_  
  
Anderson glanced up at the sound of a vehicle pulling in to the driveway outside. He listened as the garage door began to rumble open and got up out of his chair. He made his way toward the kitchen. When he got there he almost collided with a small boy who grinned and puffed out his chest, pointing proudly at his even white teeth.  
  
“Look, Dad! No braces!”  
  
“You look great, Keyop,” Anderson said, ruffling the boy’s already unruly hair. “Orion, down!” The Saint Bernard dog sat and wagged his tail instead of jumping all over his master. Alberta was holding the connecting door to the garage open so that a squat domestic service ‘bot could trundle inside. The machine secured the door behind it before it rolled forward and stopped a few feet short of its registered owner.  
  
“Good afternoon, Doctor Anderson,” it said amiably, facial LEDs flashing. “I’m delighted to report that following my major service at QTL, my systems are fully functional, complete with an upgrade to the latest software. I’m ready to resume my duties.”  
  
“I take it everything went well at the orthodontist’s?” Anderson inferred, ignoring the robot.  
  
“We spent twice as long as we needed to at Doctor Sharma’s office,” Alberta said, shrugging out of her coat. “Keyop was so excited, he couldn’t hold still in the chair, then the vet was running late and we barely made it to QTL in time to collect Zark before the maintenance section closed.” She handed the coat to the Quanto Tobor Labs ‘Zark’ unit. Anderson did likewise with his own coat and stepped aside to allow it to pass him on its way to the hall closet. Alberta approached Anderson and stood on tiptoe to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “How was your day?” She continued on her way to the glass sliding door and opened it to let the dog into the back yard.  
  
“Busy,” Anderson said. “Another batch of refugees from Riga. Two kids with spinal injuries and three degenerative neural disorders.”  
  
Alberta raised an eyebrow and adjusted the vertical blinds. “How many of them are going to be compatible for implantation?”  
  
“We’ve started scans and blood work,” Anderson said. “We’ll run computer models based on the results, but we won’t know for about a week. You can’t rush these things. Besides, the waiting list’s already stretched out to three months. Bob wants to train another neurosurgeon.”  
  
“I see.” Alberta returned to the kitchen, the better to carry on the conversation. “You’ll have to ask the Foundation for more funding, then.”  
  
The refrigerator door rattled as Keyop pulled it open to get the milk. He sloshed milk into a glass and put the bottle back in the fridge.  
  
“We’ll need a lot more funding. It’s not just another surgeon. We’ll need more nurses and allied health professionals as well. We’re already at the point where we need another physical therapist and Pharmacy are complaining that we’re hogging the IV fluids service. The Shriners want to fund another bed for charity cases. I had to tell them there just isn’t room until we can expand the unit.”  
  
Alberta switched the kettle on and smiled. “Bob wants to save every child in the galaxy. You have to admit, he has the best of intentions, and the hospital board are always delighted at the prestige associated with being the Galaxy’s one and only cerebonic treatment centre.”  
  
“I want to secure the funding and the support staff before we start expanding the surgical team any further. Bob says I’m too cautious. Do you think I’m being too cautious?”  
  
“I think you and Bob balance each other out nicely,” Alberta said, ever the diplomat. “As long as you listen to each other, you’ll be fine.” She absently caressed Keyop’s head as he made to duck past her with a cookie in one hand and his glass of milk in the other, then deftly plucked the cookie from Keyop’s grasp. “Fruit, darling,” she said, exchanging the cookie for an apple from the fruit bowl.  
  
“Yes, Mom.” Keyop continued on to the living room, biting into the apple. The cookie was deposited in the garbage bin.  
  
“If only I had your faith in me, Ally,” Anderson said.  
  
Orion barked happily from the other side of the door as a car pulled in to the driveway, the bass from the stereo carrying into the house. The sound stopped abruptly. Alberta put out cups and saucers without comment. The front door opened and closed, then a tall, red-headed youth strode into the house.  
  
“I’m home!” he called. “Hey, Orion.” The dog wagged its tail as the young man walked over to let the animal back indoors for a boisterous greeting.  
  
“We noticed,” Anderson said. “Jason, how many times do I have to tell you that playing the car stereo so loud is dam –”  
  
“– Damaging my hearing,” Jason finished. “My hearing’s fine, Dad, and you can’t play that kind of music quietly. It _needs_ to be loud. It’s not a string quartet, y’know.” Jason walked into the kitchen as he spoke and started hunting in the fruit bowl for an orange. “I’m gonna hit the shower, then I’m heading over to the library to study.”  
  
“The library, huh?” Anderson remarked. “That new assistant librarian wouldn’t have anything to do with this sudden attack of studiousness, would it?”  
  
“And what if she does?” Jason grinned. “Isn’t that how you and Mom met?”  
  
“Don’t tease the boy, David,” Alberta said. “Jason, rather than distract the young lady from her work, you should just ask her out. But not tonight. I want you home by six thirty, and when I say six thirty, young man, I don’t mean six forty-five or seven, I mean _six thirty_. On the dot. I’m relying on you.”  
  
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Jason said, grinning. “I’ll protect your sanity. Don’t I always?”  
  
“Just don’t be late, please,” Alberta said.  
  
Jason strode to the staircase and bounded up the stairs, taking them two steps at a time, the dog at his heels, trying to sniff Jason’s legs as he ran.  
  
The front door was flung open and a brunette tornado blew in. Unperturbed, the Zark unit trundled over and closed the door quietly while said tornado – in the shape of a sixteen-year-old girl – continued into the kitchen. “My _hair_ is a _disaster_! Mom, you _have_ to help me – oh, hi, Daddy – I’m getting a _zit_ on my chin and I _can’t_ wear that pink dress tonight I was talking with Jill and Frannie and it’s _got_ to be the green one only I know it’s in the laundry hamper what am I going to do can you clean it for me I’ll do anything you want, _please_?”  
  
Alberta was serene in the face of the storm. “It’s all right, darling, I took your green dress to the cleaner’s today and it’s in your room, along with the blue one and the pink one, in case you change your mind about changing your mind again.”  
  
“Mom, you’re a champ! Can I borrow your emerald necklace?”  
  
“I’m not that much of a champ. Wear your pearls.”  
  
“But, Mom! Pearls are so... _virginal_.”  
  
“No, dear, pearls are oyster snot. Now, do run along, there’s a good girl.”  
  
Anderson watched his daughter pound up the stairs and listened to her order Orion not to jump at her. “Oyster snot?” he echoed as Alberta handed him a cup of tea.  
  
“You’re the scientist in the family,” Alberta said. “Think about it.”  
  
“Thanks,” Anderson said, “but I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.” He sipped at his tea. “When do the Hawkings get here again?”  
  
Alberta put her cup down and gazed at him with fond exasperation. “Seven-thirty. It’s why you came home early, darling.”  
  
“Oh.” Anderson frowned. “Of course. I’ll get changed and have Zark set the table.”  
  
“Thanks. Could you make sure Keyop’s doing his homework and not playing computer games, please?”  
  
  
  
Princess’ shrill scream reverberated through the house, shattering the evening calm.  
  
Keyop raced through the living room, giggling, to take refuge in the kitchen. Jason was about three feet behind him, and closing. The older boy fished the younger out of the walk-in pantry by the scruff of his sweater. “‘Fess up,” he ordered.  
  
“I put a rubber spider in Princess’ shoe,” Keyop said, grinning.  
  
“Way to stress out the whole family, squirt,” Jason said. “Come on. We’re going upstairs to apologise.”  
  
“Aw, Jason...”  
  
Anderson gave his youngest son a stern look. “It’s either that or go to your room,” he said.  
  
“Yessir,” Keyop mumbled, and suffered himself to be frogmarched away by his big brother. Orion was sniffing around the island bench in the kitchen, so Anderson ordered him outside and shut the door behind him.  
  
Anderson returned to the kitchen and resumed uncorking the Cabernet Merlot blend so it could breathe. “Tell me again why we have children?” he said.  
  
“Something to do with sex, wasn’t it?” Alberta said absently, preoccupied with putting the asparagus in the steamer.   
  
“Ah, yes,” Anderson recalled. The wine cork released with a soft, hollow _pop_. “That was it.”  
  
  
  
When all but the last-minute tasks were done, Anderson rounded up Jason and Keyop.  
  
Keyop was set to clearing away his homework and gaming equipment from the living room with the assistance of the service robot, which kept up a stream of inane chatter about its apparent happiness at being well maintained by its owners.  
  
“Why all the fuss?” Jason wanted to know. “It’s just Princess’ boyfriend.”  
  
“It’s important to Princess,” Anderson said.  
  
“Mark’s just a guy,” Jason insisted. “So what if his father’s the Chief of Galaxy Security? It doesn’t send his kid’s grades up any higher.”  
  
Anderson arched an eyebrow. “What do you know about Mark?”  
  
Jason shrugged. “He’s an average student, good athlete... popular with girls. He seems to like Princess.”  
  
“And tonight,” Anderson speculated, “he’s probably scared out of his mind.”  
  
Jason chuckled. “Oh, yeah.”  
  
“I have to admit I’m not a fan of Marshall Hawking. Your mother’s met Mrs Hawking through the PTA, though, and says she’s nice.”  
  
“Dad, Mom says that about everyone.”  
  
“Don’t be disrespectful about your mother,” Anderson said automatically, but there was no heat in the rebuke, mostly because Jason was right. Alberta seemed to live in her own blithe little world of gardening, children, power shopping and PTA meetings where everything and everyone could, one way or the other, somehow be described as ‘nice.’  
  
After issuing a reminder to Keyop to feed the dog, Anderson made his way to the master suite. Alberta was sitting at the dressing table, wrapped in a silk robe, brushing her hair. The long, moon-pale strands shimmered as the brush ran through them. Alberta had always been vain about her hair, colouring the grey out as soon as she’d been able to count more than half a dozen silver threads among her ash-blonde tresses.  
  
“Princess seems serious about Mark,” she said.  
  
“Serious enough to be bringing the parents together for dinner,” Anderson pointed out.  
  
“Princess is only sixteen,” Alberta said. “Mark seems nice and everything, but don’t you think they’re a bit young to be getting serious?”  
  
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, there’s serious, and there’s serious. I’m sure this is only serious.”  
  
“As opposed to being seriously serious?” She let her hands fall into her lap, and for a moment, Anderson thought he saw the outline of a gun in her grasp. Reflexively, he stepped back. “What’s the matter?” she asked. She put the hairbrush back on the dressing table. It was only a hairbrush.  
  
“Nothing,” Anderson said.  
  
“You looked like a goose walked over your grave.”  
  
“That must have been it.” He watched as she got up and walked to the wardrobe. “Anyway,” he continued, “we weren’t that much older when we met.”  
  
“I suppose so,” Alberta said from the wardrobe. “But we’d both graduated when we got really serious about each other. They just seem so young...” The silk robe slid from her shoulders and she draped it on the bed, standing in her slip to pull a linen dress off its hanger. The dress was a very dark shade of blue. _Security blue_ , Anderson’s mind twitted. She stepped into the dress and adjusted it in front of the mirrored wardrobe door. “Zip me up please, darling?” she asked.  
  
“Why is it,” Anderson wondered aloud, “that women seem to be perfectly capable of dressing themselves without assistance right up to the point where they get married?”  
  
“It’s so husbands can feel useful, dear,” she retorted amiably.  
  
Anderson obliged, fastening the long zipper at the back of the dress. For a moment, he let his hands rest on Alberta’s shoulders, wondering why there was a nagging feeling of unease at the back of his mind, as though there was something slightly illicit about this moment of easy intimacy. The image in the mirror regarded him with the same fond devotion as always: his wife of twenty years, mother of his children. She turned so she could drape her arms around his neck.  
  
“So, am I useful yet?” he asked.  
  
“Always,” she said, and kissed him.  
  
The contact generated a sensation like slow-crawling lightning, seeking out every last nerve ending and setting them on fire. Dizzily, he returned the kiss, pulling her close so that she arched against him.  
  
“Eeeeww!” Princess’ exclamation rang through the room. “Can you two keep your hands off each other for five minutes, already?” Anderson disengaged and turned to see his daughter standing in the open doorway. She was wearing the pink dress after all, half her hair tumbled down over her left shoulder, the other half pinned up haphazardly in a mass of disorganised curls. “Hair crisis, Mom.”  
  
“All right, darling.” Alberta straightened her dress and tossed her hair back. “Let’s get the curling iron.” She caressed her husband’s face as she started to walk away. “I should talk you into coming home early more often,” she murmured.  
  
“Mom!” Princess was wringing her hands.  
  
“Relax – and don’t frown, sweeting, you’ll get tiny little wrinkles between your eyebrows and then you’ll have to have botox injections before you’re thirty.”  
  
“Oh, Mom! Isn’t that like saying that if the wind changes, I’ll stay like it?” The sound of feminine voices retreated down the corridor and into the bathroom.  
  
Anderson sat down on the edge of the bed. His pulse was still racing. What had just happened? On a purely physical level, it was subject to fairly simple deduction, but the sheer intensity of his own reaction had surprised him. It was as though he’d never kissed his own wife before. And what made him think he’d seen Ally holding a gun? She hated guns. Then there was the blue dress – _Security blue_ – why would he think of that colour as Security blue? The security guards at the hospital and the university all wore khaki uniforms. He shook his head, but couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, everything was disjointed, as though viewed through a picture frame slightly off the true. _Probably stress. Everyone says I’m working too hard._  
  
  
  
The Hawkings arrived at seven twenty-eight in a limousine with a driver and an armed bodyguard. There were six of them: Mark of course, the young man with whom Princess seemed utterly besotted, his older brother Martin who was an officer in the Cosmic Patrol, his younger brother Timothy, who was a couple of years younger than Keyop, their mother Rhiannon, their cousin Tiny Harper who was up from the country for school and Marshall Hawking himself, the Chief of Galaxy Security.  
  
Anderson was largely – though not entirely – unprepared for the wave of resentment he felt toward Security Chief Hawking. It had been a long time, but clearly not long enough.  
  
Alberta and Rhiannon were in their element. They immediately started chattering about children, the high school where Jason, Princess, Mark and Tiny attended, the exclusive private school where both Keyop and Timothy were enrolled and their mutual acquaintances at both institutions. The older children all knew each other. Keyop adopted a kindly superior attitude toward Timothy and that left the two patriarchs to size each other up.  
  
“I’ve read quite a lot about your work, David,” Hawking said.  
  
“I’m sure you have,” Anderson said, surprised at his own vehemence.  
  
“You have a long memory,” Hawking said with a smile. It was the smile Anderson remembered, that smug, knowing smile under that pencil-thin moustache.  
  
“Yes,” Anderson agreed. “I do.”  
  
“We have our differences,” Hawking said, “but my son and your daughter aren’t interested in ancient history. Let’s not spoil it for them. I think I can honestly say I haven’t seen Mark get this serious about a girl, before.”  
  
“They’re very young,” Anderson qualified.  
  
“Still young enough to know everything,” Hawking joked.  
  
Anderson didn’t smile. “Can I get you a drink?” he offered instead.  
  
“Vodka martini, if you don’t mind,” Hawking said.  
  
Anderson busied himself at the bar while Alberta completed a few last-minute tasks in the kitchen.  
  
Dinner was predictably noisy, with Princess and Mark both on tenterhooks, ready to be mortally embarrassed by anything and everything their respective families said or did. After the meal, Keyop and Timothy played ball with Orion and had to be restrained by their older siblings from turning ‘fetch’ into a version of water polo. Alberta had turned on the charm and engaged Hawking in conversation, encouraging him to expound on the personal dangers of being Chief of Galaxy Security.   
  
How odd, to see her laughing and animated... but wasn’t that the way she always was?  
  
Stranger still to watch the youngsters interact. It was as though they belonged together, and yet they weren’t particular friends at school. To hear Jason tell it, he hardly knew the Hawkings, yet the teens all seemed completely at ease with one another.  
  
Rhiannon Hawking seemed almost apologetic. “I worry about all the boys, of course,” she said to Anderson, who found himself feeling curiously sympathetic. “It’s so nice to have Martin home on leave. The galaxy’s a dangerous place these days, what with Spectra having occupied Riga. Mark and Timmy both want to go to the Academy and join up, but I made Mark promise he’d graduate from college first. I don’t want him to follow in his father’s footsteps,” she said, which made Anderson wonder why she would confide in a stranger such as himself. “He’s not cut out for the military.” She smiled and sipped at her wine. “Princess is such a lovely girl,” she said. “I hope she can make him see sense.”  
  
“They’re not even out of their teens,” Anderson said. “That’s too young to know what you really want for the rest of your life.” _And yet I knew,_ he recalled. _I knew I wanted to be a medical researcher. I knew I wanted to help people... Why do I feel as though I could have made the wrong choice when I know it was right?_  
  
Anderson let his gaze drift over the long table. His family seemed happy, safe and secure despite the looming spectre of war. He had a job he loved, the cerebonic programme was a resounding success and it seemed that everything was perfect.  
  
So why was he plagued with this nagging feeling of unease? _What’s wrong with me, tonight?_  
  
After dinner, the Zark unit cleared up while everyone took their drinks to the living room. Not unexpectedly, Mark and Princess went outside to walk by the pool and the two younger boys were obliged to behave under Tiny’s watchful eye. Martin and Jason were talking cars and the women had returned to the inexhaustible subject of children.  
  
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Hawking said to Anderson. “Any objections if I go outside for a smoke?”  
  
“As a doctor, plenty,” Anderson said, “but as your host, I’ll show you the garden.”  
  
He led Hawking out onto a side terrace where roses flourished in big planters despite the environmental disaster of – _Environmental disaster? There haven’t been any environmental disasters. I must be losing my mind._ Anderson took a deep breath of clean air. Hawking took it as a hint and had the courtesy to stand downwind and away from the doors before lighting up.  
  
“I take it,” Hawking said, “that if I were to repeat the offer I made you twenty years ago, you’d throw me out.”  
  
“You take it correctly, Chief Hawking,” Anderson said. “There’s no conceivable justification for a military application of cerebonic technology. Not then, not now. We never overcame the age obstacle. No matter what we did, we couldn’t find a way of making an adult central nervous system adapt to the military-grade implants. Not all children are compatible. The rejection rate in the early days was horrendous – as I’m sure you know. It’s only in the last few years we’ve developed our testing regimes to the point where we can arrive at a ninety-five percent compatibility rate among those who pass through screening. Cerebonic implants are purely therapeutic in their application. They can’t make super-soldiers. Not for you, not for Spectra. Not for _anyone._ ”  
  
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Hawking said. He turned a grim gaze on the scientist. “There’s a war coming, David. Spectra has consolidated its hold on Riga and they’re getting ready to expand their franchise again. The next item on their agenda is Earth. Right now, you can afford the luxury of your medical ethics committees and allow yourself to be ruled by your conscience. I can’t.”  
  
“Then what’s the difference,” Anderson asked mildly, “between them and us?”  
  
“For starters,” Hawking pointed out, “it’s our planet.”  
  
“That’s a little glib, don’t you think?” Anderson said.  
  
“As I said,” Hawking growled, “I don’t have the luxury of your morality.”  
  
“And what happens, Chief Hawking, when we all act as though the end justified the means? History shows us that when we start down that path, it inevitably leads to a breakdown of social mores and natural justice. When does my justification outweigh yours, or vice versa? When it comes down to mere opinion, what’s left but anarchy and the rule of the gun?”  
  
“I suppose,” Hawking said, “that’s why we need the Doctor Andersons of this world, to keep it safe for small children and their dogs.” He took a long drag of his cigarette. “The fact remains that we’re facing a war we probably won’t be able to win and I’ll tell you straight, our best won’t be good enough. Riga’s fallen and we’re next.” He fixed Anderson with a penetrating stare. “The worst I’ll do is throw sarcasm at you, Doctor. Zoltar won’t stop there. He’ll take you and your technology by force and he’ll twist it to his will, no matter what you say or do. If you’re lucky, he might just kill you and your family. If you’re not... “  
  
“Are you trying to scare me?” Anderson asked.  
  
“Yes,” Hawking said. “I’m scared and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be scared, too. Take your team and all your families and get off world if you can. This planet’s as good as doomed. Move to Arcturus or Vega or one of the older Federation worlds, but don’t stay here, and don’t leave anything behind.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this?”  
  
“Because your work is important. I’ll be honest with you: if I’d had my way I would have coerced you into joining G-Sec twenty years ago and confiscated every last piece of research you ever did in the hope of using it to save this planet, but the law back then wouldn’t let me do it. Now it’s too late. I’m sending Rhia and the kids to New Chicago. I suggest you go, too. Let Mark and Princess follow their hearts. Let them have a chance.”  
  
Anderson stared at Hawking in patent disbelief. Surely no-one in Hawking’s position would reveal information like this to a civilian! To do so would constitute a breach of any number of levels of security. The man was either depraved or was trying to manipulate him. Anderson settled on the latter as being the most likely.  
  
“I’ll consider what you’ve said,” Anderson replied after a moment.  
  
“You do that,” Hawking said, “but don’t take too long about it.”  
  
The party broke up around ten, with Mark and Princess lingering to hold hands and murmur to one another.  
  
“Come on, already!” Timothy exclaimed. “Maybe you’ve got all night, but the rest of us would like to go home!”  
  
Belatedly, Tiny clapped a hand over Timothy’s mouth. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he apologised.  
  
The Andersons’ guests departed with their big black limousine and their gun-toting guard. Anderson watched as the tail lights disappeared into the night, feeling oddly displaced again, like a man who goes to sit at a writing desk only to find it replaced with a raven.  
  
“David?” Alberta reached out and touched his arm. “Come inside.”  
  
  
  
For once, Keyop raised no objections about being put to bed. Anderson tucked him in and turned out the light.  
  
“‘Night, Dad,” Keyop mumbled sleepily.  
  
“Goodnight, son.” From the doorway, Anderson studied the small form huddled under the bedclothes. Why had Hawking warned him about the war? What could he possibly hope to gain with what was effectively a threat against Anderson’s family?  
  
There was really only one answer: the cerebonic technology. It was patented and the information kept strictly commercial-in-confidence. Even altruism had a price in the galactic economy. So why hadn’t G-Sec simply stolen it? Anderson was fairly sure that no security system he or his colleagues could devise would be enough to keep Galaxy Security at bay if they wanted something badly enough. Was there an additional factor? Politics, perhaps?  
  
Anderson took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Moving the project off-world would provide a motivated individual with a window of opportunity. Was Hawking’s warning a feint to flush game from cover? And was cerebonic technology the prize? He replaced his glasses and headed for the master bedroom. Alberta was already in bed, her hair still slightly damp and fragrant from her shower, propped up against the pillows and reading _Whorls Apart: A History of Pre-Starfaring Spiritualist Architectural Styles on Planet Vega_. Anderson probably could have imagined a more crushingly boring title if he really put his mind to it, but he lacked the inclination to do so.  
  
Alberta slid a bookmark in place and put the book on her nightstand. She drew her knees up and hugged them over the top of the quilt. “Penny for your thoughts, darling?” she said, with that knowing look that told him she knew perfectly well he was troubled about something more than Princess’ choice of boyfriend.  
  
“It’s nothing,” he lied. She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Marshall Hawking bothers me, Ally,” he said. “He pays far too much attention to the cerebonic programme. I think he wants to weaponise it somehow.”  
  
“He seemed nice,” Alberta said.  
  
  
  
By the time Anderson had showered and made his way to bed, Alberta was dozing.  
  
“Al?” Anderson said.  
  
“Don’t call me Al,” she mumbled. “It makes me sound like a lorry driver.”  
  
“Ally,” he corrected himself, “do you think there’ll be a war?”  
  
She roused herself enough to turn over and half propped herself up on one elbow. “In all honesty, yes. I do. And it frightens me. Even more frightening is the thought that our defence will be run by people like Marshall Hawking.”  
  
“I thought you said he seemed nice.”  
  
“Yes. He _seemed_ nice. Possibly he’s really not.”  
  
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Anderson sighed. “About the war, I mean. I was hoping you’d tell me I was completely wrong.”  
  
“Sorry, darling.” She sat up so she could reach the lamp and switched it off, then nestled down beside him.  
  
“Hawking said something about Earth being next on Spectra’s galactic shopping list,” Anderson said into Alberta’s hair. “He went so far as to suggest we should move ourselves and the cerebonic programme to Arcturus.”  
  
“Perhaps you should consider it,” Alberta said, “but it’s a big move, and it’s not just us. It’s Bob and Kate and everyone on the team. You’d have to find another hospital big enough that could take it on, secure new sources of funding... You’d have to stop taking patients while you closed the unit down, then set everything up again on Arcturus, with no guarantees that we still wouldn’t find ourselves in the middle of an interplanetary war.”  
  
“And who knows what could happen while we were doing that?” Anderson wondered.  
  
“Sleep on it,” Alberta said. “Talk to Bob, talk to your team. You’ll make the right decision.”  
  
“I hope you’re right.”  
  
“I believe in you, David.” She let her head rest on his shoulder. “Now go to sleep.”  
  
“Good night, Ally.”  
  
Anderson lay and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering why it should feel strange to lie here in this bed.  
  
In the early years, he had spent many nights away from home working the seemingly endless on‑call, evening and graveyard shifts expected of all junior medical staff. When Jason and Princess – and later, Keyop – were born, there had been the usual sleepless nights that come with almost all babies. When he moved into research, he had been home, mostly, except for the occasional conference. When the cerebonic programme had begun, there had been nights on‑call, the occasional emergency, but mostly, he’d spent his nights like this, at home with his wife in their bed.  
  
Why wouldn’t he have?  
  
And yet there was the shadow of a memory, pecking at him: the memory of sleeping alone, night after night. Mentally, he scrabbled at it: a house, not unlike this one, but empty of children; an unfamiliar room that smelled of processed air with a big window looking out on... a giant fish tank? No. An office that looked out over a reef. Under the sea. His children, dressed oddly alike in numbered shirts... the Hawking boy, defying him. Jason, angry and restless... winged figures gliding out of the sun and a huge blue and red aircraft lifting off vertically from an air base.  
  
There was an odd lurch and he opened his eyes to see sun streaming in the window. A dream. How strange.  
  
Alberta stirred next to him. “Morning,” she mumbled.  
  
“Morning,” he replied automatically. “Sleep well?”  
  
“Like a log. You?”  
  
“I must have, but you know how sometimes you feel you haven’t slept at all?”  
  
“Mmmm... well, why don’t you have a lie-in? It’s Saturday. We don’t have to be anywhere until Keyop’s baseball game this afternoon.”  
  
“No, I’ll get up.”  
  
Jason had already gone out to the race track to work on his lap times. Princess was glaring at Keyop and grumbling into her cereal. “I was totally embarrassed by this family last night,” she declared. “I am _so_ adopted!”  
  
Anderson glanced at her sharply, about to say that, as a matter of fact, she was, but caught himself. He’d been present when she was born. She’d been overdue (thus, Anderson maintained, establishing a pattern of perpetual lateness) and the obstetrician had induced labour. He remembered how it had felt to have Alberta’s desperate and sweaty hand crushing his fingers as she endured hard, fast contractions, the perspiration pouring off her face, and the complete and utter relief when it was over. He remembered marvelling at that unique post-partum amnesia that seemed to wipe away the memory of the ordeal as Alberta fussed over their beautiful, perfect new daughter, laughing and joking with the nurses.  
  
“Of course you find us embarrassing, darling,” Alberta said serenely. “At your age, it doesn’t matter what your family does, it’s always embarrassing. I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept the fact that we exist. You’ll get over it as you get older.”  
  
“I doubt that,” Princess muttered. When the phone rang, Princess grabbed at it and answered without checking the caller ID, then she frowned and turned to Anderson. “Daddy, it’s for you. The hospital.”  
  
Anderson picked up the receiver. “Anderson.”  
  
_“This is Kate Halloran in the ER. There’s been some kind of attack on the city. They’ve declared a disaster and the hospital’s filling up from all sides. We need everyone on deck and we need you to discharge any of your patients who are stable enough to go home. How soon can you get in?”_  
  
“I’m on my way,” Anderson said. He hung up. “Ally, turn on the news. Something’s happened. I have to go.” He ran upstairs to get his jacket, then went to the study to get his briefcase and car keys. When he returned, Alberta was waiting for him in the hall.  
  
“I’ve called Jason to come home,” she said. “It’s all over the news. Some kind of military strike. They’re saying it’s Planet Spectra.”  
  
“It’s started,” Anderson said bleakly. “Stay here. See if you can book tickets to New Chicago for yourself and the kids. Call Hawking’s office for help if you have to. I’ll call you when I can.”  
  
“What about a ticket off world for you?” Alberta asked, her face pale.  
  
“I can’t abandon the programme, Ally.”  
  
“You can’t abandon _us_!”  
  
“I can’t argue now, sweetheart. I have to go.”  
  
“I’m booking a ticket for you, anyway.” She threw her arms around his neck and he held her. “Be careful. I love you.”  
  
“Love you, too,” he told her. “I’ll be back as soon as we get things under control.”  
  
He drove, noting the build-up of traffic heading out of the city even as he headed in the opposite direction. Smoke billowed up from the city skyline and he gave thanks that this had happened on a Saturday and not during the week when casualties would have been higher.  
  
Closer to the hospital, the traffic grew heavier. It took him ten minutes to drive one block. Another fifteen minutes later, he had made it to the hospital car park and headed for the cerebonic unit. Bob Halloran was walking in the door.  
  
“We’re going to have to cancel surgery for next week,” Bob was saying. “I hate this, David.”  
  
“I don’t much care for it, myself,” Anderson said. “Let’s see if we can send some of these kids home.”  
  
The nurse coordinator had already prepared a list of likely candidates for discharge, and Halloran approved it unchanged. “We’d better get down to the ER and check in with Kate,” he said.  
  
The next few hours passed in a blur of bloodied bodies. The Emergency Room and its staff acquired that distinctive smell of blood and bodily fluids that hung, cloying, despite the best efforts of the air conditioning and the cleaners, who marched through with mops and buckets of bleach. Anderson, out of his depth in the face of advanced trauma medicine after all these years of specialist research, was put to work in the outpatient clinics, tending to the walking wounded, suturing and dressing minor wounds like an intern. Bob Halloran was in the operating room, working on head trauma cases.  
  
At midday, the power went out for a few seconds as the grid failed, then the emergency generators kicked in and the lights flickered back on.  
  
Whispers began to circulate: the city was under attack again. Anderson took a moment between patients to pick up his phone to call home, but the network was congested and he couldn’t get through.  
  
More whispers: the invader had been driven off; the city was a disaster area; there was looting in the streets; martial law had been declared.  
  
When, finally, the stream of patients slowed to a trickle, the surgeons, physicians and nursing staff of Central General stopped to take stock: every available bed was full. Every gurney was occupied. Every ward was operating at capacity. The OR was winding down. The army had brought in additional generators to bring power back up to normal levels.  
  
The ER Director addressed her stained and weary staff, congratulating them on a job well done. People volunteered to stay for the next and subsequent shifts. Staffing coordinators juggled nursing rosters. Bob Halloran’s hand rested on Anderson’s shoulder. “Time to go home and get some rest,” he said.  
  
Anderson traipsed back to the car park. Someone was standing beside his car, wreathed in shadow and cigarette smoke.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Anderson asked. “Shouldn’t you be out there?”  
  
“This _is_ ‘out there,’“ Hawking said.  
  
“Why?” Anderson asked, weary to his bones.  
  
“David,” Hawking said, gently, “it’s never easy to break news like this,” and Anderson took a step back, already reeling.  
  
“No,” he said.  
  
“I’m sorry. It was a direct hit from an enemy missile. It took out an entire block in one instant. Your house was in the middle of it. There were no survivors.”  
  
“No,” Anderson said again. “You’re lying.” A gulf was opening up inside him, black and yawning.  
  
“This didn’t have to happen!” Hawking shouted, suddenly angry, jolting Anderson back from the brink. “You could have stopped this! You could have made a different choice, all those years ago! You could have done the right thing instead of the self-righteous thing and saved this planet, saved your family!”  
  
“How do you know it would have made a difference?” Anderson demanded, tottering. “How can you possibly know?”  
  
“Maybe there’s still time for other worlds,” Hawking said. “Maybe you can still save other planets, other families.”  
  
“How?” Anderson closed his eyes. They couldn’t be gone. This wasn’t...  
  
Wasn’t _what?_  
  
“Tell me about cerebonics. Tell me how they work. Tell me how you can turn an ordinary human being into a super-warrior. Tell me, so I can stop this.”  
  
“But how can it help anyone, _now_?” Anderson whispered. “It’s too late.”  
  
“For you, yes,” Hawking said, implacable. “For your family, yes. But not for the rest of the galaxy. You can still be of use. It isn’t over.”  
  
“What you propose is still immoral – no, it’s _a_ moral, completely devoid of any ethical justification altogether. How dare you come to me like this? How dare you make these demands of me, _now_?”  
  
“You still refuse to help your planet?” Hawking asked. There was a dangerous ring to his voice. “Even after this, you won’t help us fight back?”  
  
“Not in the way you want me to, Hawking. Not with children.”  
  
“Then I’m sorry,” Hawking said, drawing a gun from under his jacket, “but that makes you an obstruction and a liability. Perhaps it’s better this way. At least now you can be with your family.”  
  
He took aim and fired.

 


	2. Cogito, Ergo Sum

 

David Anderson woke up with a start.  
  
“Uncle Dave!” Mark was shouting at that piercing volume that only small boys can achieve. “You have to look!”  
  
Anderson blinked and took a deep breath. He was staring at green leaves – the canopy of an old oak – with tiny glimpses of blue sky and pale sunlight filtering through. Beneath him was a slightly scratchy blanket of the type his grandmother always used to use when going on picnics, while around him, the sounds of children playing filled the air.  
  
“It’s flying!” Mark screamed. “Look! It’s flying!”  
  
Still prone, Anderson turned his head toward the sound of Mark’s voice. The boy was struggling with a piece of string, at the far end of which a bright red kite was straining. The fabric of the kite was fluttering, tail streaming in the wind. Six-year-old Mark was barely keeping control of the kite while his father watched and smiled at the boy’s excitement. Next to Mark, Tiny was hovering, ready to help if needed.  
  
“Marsh,” Rhiannon called, “don’t let that thing get away from him!” Anderson took in the scene. Of course, the picnic: Marsh and Rhia with Mark and Tiny, James and Erin with Jason, Alberta and himself with Princess. They’d had lunch then watched Jason open his birthday presents. Anderson reasoned that he must have dozed off at some point.  
  
“If it does,” Marshall Hawking was saying, “it’ll be a valuable lesson.”  
  
“Marsh, really!” Alberta scolded. “He’s only six. There’s plenty of time for life lessons later.”  
  
“The sooner he learns, the easier the lesson is,” Hawking retorted, his smile never fading. “You can’t wrap them up in cotton wool forever, Ally.”  
  
“There’s no talking to you, Marsh,” Alberta sighed. She turned to her husband for support. “There’s no talking to him, is there, David?”  
  
Anderson braced his hands against the blanket, feeling the soft turf give slightly underneath it and pushed himself into a sitting position, back leaning against the ancient oak behind him. “How long was I asleep?”  
  
“About fifteen minutes or so,” Alberta said. “You looked as though you needed it. You’ve been working much too hard, lately.”  
  
“I had the weirdest dream,” he said. “We were all... older.”  
  
“Oh, dear,” Alberta said. She poured coffee from an insulated flask into a cup and handed it to him. “I hope I aged well.”  
  
“Of course you did,” Anderson said, accepting the coffee.  
  
“What about me?” Erin asked. “You know I’m already finding grey hairs!”  
  
Anderson swallowed a sip of coffee. “You weren’t in it, sorry.”  
  
“Oh, good,” James said. “It’s a relief to know that my little brother doesn’t dream about my wife – Hey!” James’ attention was diverted by the radio-controlled car that jumped his knees and landed, wheels spinning, in the potato salad. He threw up his hands to block the shower of mayonnaise that accompanied the operator’s attempts to extricate the vehicle.  
  
Princess, although she was well out of the path of the flying salad dressing, shrieked and tried to dive between her parents. Alberta reached one hand toward her daughter, the other over her belly. Anderson intervened and pulled the little girl into his lap.  
  
“Careful,” he cautioned. “You nearly hit your head against the tree, and you almost squashed your Mom.”  
  
“I don’t wanna get my dress dirty!” Princess declared.  
  
“Jason!” Erin called. “Stop that! Come over here and get your car!”  
  
“Okay, Mom!” Jason, whose seventh birthday was the cause of the picnic, strolled over at a leisurely pace while James applied wet wipes to clean the mayonnaise from where it had spattered on his face, hands and clothing.  
  
“Jason,” James growled, “when are you going to learn to be more careful?”  
  
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Dad!” Jason shot back. “I was trying to turn it away but it kept going straight! There’s something wrong with it.”  
  
“Oh, come on,” James said. “It’s barely out of the box.”  
  
“The steering wheel on the controller’s loose, Uncle Jay,” Princess said.  
  
James’ head swing sharply toward the source of the interruption. “What?”  
  
“Jason was showing me how it works before,” Princess explained. “The steering’s loose. I think I can fix it, though. Daddy, can I borrow your multi-tool?”  
  
“Sure.” Anderson rummaged in his trouser pocket and handed over a slimline Leatherman. “Remember to be careful with the sharp bits, okay?”  
  
“I’m always careful, Daddy.”  
  
With the confidence born of experience, Jason surrendered the radio control unit to his petite cousin who sat on the picnic blanket and applied the Leatherman to the screws. “See, this bit here is wobbly...” Princess explained. “If I tighten this... Here, hang onto these washers, Jason.”  
  
The mess temporarily forgotten, the adults watched Princess repair and reassemble the controller. Erin shook her head. “I think there may be a genius in the family,” she said.  
  
“Don’t put ideas in her head, please,” Alberta said. “Last week she over-boosted the blender.”  
  
“She... oh, my,” Erin said.  
  
“The ceiling’s being repainted on Tuesday,” Alberta said.  
  
“Here,” Princess announced, and handed the controller back to Jason. “Try it now.”  
  
“Try it after you’ve helped me clean up this mess,” James corrected, pushing the pack of wet wipes into his son’s hands.  
  
“Yes, Dad,” Jason sighed.  
  
Princess dutifully returned the Leatherman to her father. “Daddy, may I please go watch Mark and Tiny fly their kite?”  
  
“Of course, sweetheart,” Anderson said. “Just stay away from the brook.”  
  
“I don’t wanna get my dress wet,” Princess said. She skipped down the slope toward the Hawking boys.  
  
“Wait for me!” Jason tossed the wet wipes aside and hurried after Princess.  
  
Erin gave Alberta a calculating look. “When were you going to tell the rest of us?”  
  
Anderson looked from his wife to his sister-in-law. “Is this some kind of female telepathy?” he asked.  
  
Erin cast her gaze skyward. “Men!” she declared. “When Princess nearly landed on you, your body language gave you away. How far along?”  
  
Alberta smiled. “Three months. We only just had it confirmed. A boy this time.”  
  
“Another Anderson male,” James said, and grinned. “Y’think the Galaxy’s big enough for four of us, Davey?”  
  
“It’s going to have to be,” Anderson pointed out.  
  
“Who’d have thought it?” James said. “You and me, family men.”  
  
“Stranger things have happened,” Anderson pointed out. “Maybe you’re not as badass as you pretend to be after all.”  
  
“Huh!” Erin had risen to her feet. “Badass enough to help me clean up the potato salad storm and pack this stuff away.”  
  
“I hear and obey,” James mugged, and complied.  
  
Anderson leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes, content.  
  
  
  
“Well, isn’t this just spiffing?” a sharp voice said.  
  
Anderson opened his eyes. He was reclining on a stereotypical psychiatrist’s couch and a few feet away, perched in an executive chair, was Alberta, wearing... leather? She was sitting with her legs crossed, wearing leather trousers, impossibly high heels and some kind of corset, the effect of which could only be described as ‘upward displacement.’ He decided it was probably best to just try and maintain eye contact and ignore the whip that she was holding.  
  
“What the hell’s going on?” Anderson asked, struggling to sit up.  
  
“Don’t ask me,” Alberta said waspishly. “This was all your idea.”  
  
“What was my idea?” Anderson demanded. “And why are you dressed like that?”  
  
“I’m not me, you idiot! I’m a manifestation of your subconscious, and a pretty sick and twisted subconscious it is, let me tell you.”  
  
Anderson peered into the gloom. Apart from himself, the furniture and his dubious companion, there was only blackness. It was a blackness that lacked depth or nuance. It was more of a nothingness than a blackness. Odd.  
  
“If you’re my subconscious, do you think you could possibly manifest in a slightly less... distracting way?” he asked.  
  
“At least I got your attention,” Alberta said, and abruptly she was clad in tailored linen trousers and a neat silk blouse. She’d kept the shoes, though. “Better?”  
  
“Thank you. Now, once more with feeling: what the hell’s going on?”  
  
“Good question,” she said.  
  
“I thought it was. Do you – I – we – have an answer?”  
  
“Not sure. You’re awfully happy at the moment, don’t you think?”  
  
“Well, yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
“Um... there’s a... thing. Pointy sort of a thing. Noisy. What’s it called again? War. That’s it. There’s a war on.”  
  
“A war? What war?” That didn’t make sense at all. Although, in some terrible way, it did. The answer seemed to be hovering just beyond his ability to comprehend it.  
  
Alberta stood up and glanced around anxiously. “There’s no time to explain. I’m not real, David. Remember that. You’re not going to remember much, but you’re trying to warn yourself. _I’m not real_.”  
  
  
  
“My goodness, you’re quite the sleepyhead today,” Alberta said as Anderson opened his eyes to verdant parkland. “If you’re trying to make up in advance for all the sleep we’re going to lose in about six months’ time, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.”  
  
Groggily, Anderson shook his head. “I feel slightly drunk,” he said. “Jay didn’t spike my coffee with anything, did he?”  
  
“He wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Alberta said. Anderson followed her gaze to where James was carrying a picnic basket back toward his silver SUV. “You could be coming down with something, darling. Just take it easy for a bit.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “This is nice, isn’t it?”  
  
“Very,” he agreed. He put his arms around her and pulled her closer against him so that she was leaning back against his chest. “Everything’s perfect.”  
  
“It’s almost scary,” Alberta said. “It’s so perfect, it feels as though we’re tempting fate. Perfection’s such a fragile thing.”  
  
“Then I guess we have to work at keeping it that way,” Anderson said.  
  
Alberta tilted her head back to look at him. “I’m game if you are,” she said.  
  
“David! Ally!” Marshall’s voice carried with both volume and urgency. Anderson looked up to see his friend running toward him, the children in tow. The expression on the faces of both Marshall and Rhia had Anderson and Alberta on their feet.  
  
“What is it?” Alberta asked as the others approached. Princess ran to her mother and clung to her. Rhia was clutching at Mark and Tiny. Mark’s blue eyes were wide with fear and confusion while Tiny held onto the red kite with its tangled line as though it were a lifebuoy.  
  
“It’s Spectra,” Marshall said. “I just got a call. They’re attacking the city.”  
  
“It’s too soon,” Anderson said reflexively, then wondered why.  
  
“What?” Marshall glared at him. “How could you know that?”  
  
Anderson shrugged, puzzled. “I guess you must have mentioned something at some time - it’s all over the damned news with pundits guessing whether or not Spectra’s going to move on the Federation. But why here? Why now? And how did they get past our defences? This is _Earth,_ not some outpost!”  
  
Anderson’s palm unit rang. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen, which read, _Center City Memorial Hospital ER._  
  
“You’d better take it,” Alberta said.  
  
James was jogging over from where they’d parked their cars, palm unit in hand. “Marsh, did you -?”  
  
“Yeah, I did,” Marshall said.  
  
Anderson answered his incoming call.  
  
“ _David, it’s Kate Halloran. We need every doctor we can get in here._ ”  
  
“I just heard. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  
  
“ _Thanks. I have more calls to make. It’s crazy here._ ”  
  
Anderson looked at his companions and felt sick with the knowledge that this might be the last time his family was together.  
  
Erin was holding Jason’s hand. “Dave, Ally, can you take Jason for us? We’ve been called to G-Sec Headquarters. Marsh, do you want to ride in with us? Rhia can take the boys home in your car.”  
  
“Of course,” Alberta said.  
  
“Actually,” Rhia said, “We’d better pile in with Ally and the kids. Your car’s bigger. It’ll be a tight fit but we’ll manage. David needs to get to the hospital. Take our car, Dave.”  
  
“That makes sense,” Alberta agreed as Rhia tossed the keys to the Hawking’s sedan to Anderson.  
  
Anderson bent and kissed the top of Princess’ head. “You be good, okay? I’ll be back when I can.”  
  
“But Daddy,” Princess said, her eyes filling with tears, “we were all going to go for ice cream!”  
  
“We’ll do that when I get back. I promise.” He stood up and embraced Alberta, holding her close. “I’ll call you when I can.”  
  
“Make sure you do,” Alberta said. “Come back safe.”  
  
“I will,” he said. “I swear. I promise to fight for what we have, Ally. Whatever it takes, I will _always_ come back to you.”  
  
  
  
The car radio was alive with news about the Spectran attack. Unfortunately, most of it seemed to be confusion and panic. The traffic was heading away from the city, which worried Anderson as he got closer to the hospital. In the distance, toward the bay, black smoke was rising into the sky and spreading out as it hit the inversion layer. When he arrived, the staff car park was full, so he parked illegally on the footpath leading to the entrance, secured the vehicle and ran for the ER.  
  
He was almost to the staff entrance when a tall blonde woman ran up to him and punched him in the jaw.  
  
  
  
“Nice,” Alberta said as Anderson woke up on the psychiatrist’s couch. “Hit by a girl. Well done, you.”  
  
Anderson flexed his jaw. It didn’t hurt. “Thought you weren’t real,” he said.  
  
“I’m not,” Alberta said. She was – thankfully – dressed in a business suit this time. “You’re in deep shit, David.” She looked around as though listening to something he couldn’t hear. “They suspect that I’m here. They know you’re resisting. Remember that I’m not real, okay?”  
  
  
  
Anderson opened his eyes as he was hauled bodily to his feet.  
  
“What –?” he started to protest, and fell silent at the sight in front of him: Princess and Alberta, held at gunpoint by four men in green and brown uniforms. The uniforms were familiar from news reports, marking the men as Spectran infantry.  
  
The blonde woman tightened her grip on his arm. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” she said. “The easy way is that you simply agree to do what I tell you. The hard way is that every time you refuse to cooperate, I have one of my men put a bullet in your wife. It won’t start off fatal – we’ll just go for a hand or a foot to begin with – but if you keep saying ‘no’ to me, eventually she’ll die, and then we start on the girl. So what’s it to be? The easy way, or the hard way?”  
  
“Don’t hurt them,” Anderson said. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt them.”  
  
“Tell me about your research. Tell me how it works.”  
  
“My work?”  
  
“Stalling me counts as not cooperating,” the blonde woman said. She motioned to one of her men, who wrenched Alberta’s left hand out to one side and pressed the muzzle of his handgun against her outstretched palm.  
  
“No!” Anderson cried, struggling. “I’ll tell you! Don’t!”  
  
Alberta screamed as the gun went off. Princess shrieked and began to cry hysterically.  
  
“How many times do I have to ask?” the Spectran woman snarled. Alberta was on her knees, clutching her bloody hand to her chest, gasping in pain and trying not to scream again while Princess howled and struggled, crying for her mother.  
  
Anderson took a breath. “She’s not real,” he said.  
  
“Do you really want to see her die?”  
  
Anderson summoned every erg of strength he had and wrenched free of the woman’s grip. Before she could react, the heel of his hand had connected - hard - with her nose and she went down like a sack of potatoes. “She’s not real,” he said again.  
  
The breath was knocked out of him as the Spectran soldiers opened fire and the bullets ripped through his chest.  
  



	3. A Bad Day

The Deputy Chief of Galaxy Security was not having a good day.  
  
“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Jason said, leaning forward over Roland Galbraith’s desk, hands flat on the timber surface. Galbraith refrained from pointing out that Jason was not, in fact sitting, but instead leaned back to increase the distance between his face and the pointed tip of the raptorial visor thrust toward him.  
  
“What do you suggest we do, then?” Galbraith asked.  
  
Jason straightened, the wingtips of his cape swinging around his booted calves with the movement. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the Acting Chief of Galaxy Security, you’re supposed to have a plan!”  
  
“I do,” Galbraith said. “You just heard it. There’s no sense in deploying you just so you can expend fuel and energy. When I send you in, it’ll be to resolve the situation, not to run around yelling to make yourselves feel better.”  
  
“Since when do we yell?” Tiny wanted to know, drawing himself up indignantly.  
  
“Doctor Galbraith,” Mark said as he rose from his seat, “the Chief of Galaxy Security has been captured. Not only is he the most valuable human asset of this agency, he’s the man who raised me, the man I look to as a father. You’ll forgive me if I feel the need to _run around_.”  
  
“You’re at high alert,” Galbraith said, “and we have every available asset searching for any sign of Chief Anderson’s whereabouts. I can’t risk sending you in the wrong direction. I need you here and prepped for take-off. As soon as we have any information on where Chief Anderson has been taken, you’ll go in and take care of it.”  
  
_“Take care of it?_ ” Jason echoed.  
  
“Spectra can’t be allowed to interrogate him,” Mark said, his voice shaking slightly. “He knows too much.”  
  
“So if we can’t extract him,” Jason said without taking his eyes from Galbraith’s, “we _neutralise_ him.”  
  
“And everything with him,” Mark added bleakly. “We leave nothing behind.”  
  
Princess said nothing, but had her hands clasped in her lap, her face white with tension. Keyop reached over and touched her arm, looking for reassurance, and she pulled him close so that he could curl in against her side. They sat in silence while Jason paced up and down the length of Galbraith’s office.  
  
  
  
The members of Chief Anderson’s security detail were not having a good day.  
  
“Did anyone get the number of that giant... whatever it was?” Shay Alban grumbled, propping herself up with both arms.  
  
“Finally! You’re awake,” Alberta Jones said crisply. “Sorry, Shay, no idea. I didn’t get much of a look at it, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t like to try giving it a ticket.” Chief Anderson’s staff liaison officer was on her feet and glaring at the walls as though they’d each managed to give joint and several offence. “Besides,” she added, “I can feel engine vibrations. We’re either in a base close to a plant room, or we’re aboard the ship that attacked us with the auxiliary power unit at idle. Either way, it's not on my top ten list of places I want to be.” She looked around the room and her gaze rested on the form of Anderson’s driver. “Are you all right, Corp?”  
  
“I’ve had better days, ma’am,” Pete Mendelawitz said groggily. He sat up and rubbed his eyes in the apparent hope that his brain would very shortly come to a decision as to which way was up. “How are you so chipper?”  
  
“I’m resistant to depressive drugs. Something genetic and complicated apparently. Bloody inconvenient when I want to get drunk. Has anyone seen my hat?” Jones asked.  
  
“No, ma’am,” Mendelawitz groaned.  
  
“What a jolly nuisance,” Jones complained. “Captured, taken aboard an enemy ship, and out of uniform.”  
  
Alban was sitting up and cradling her head in her hands. Unruly honey-coloured hair spilled over her fingers. She pushed it back from her face, only to have it flop back again. “I guess they’re adding insult to injury. Anyone remember anything beyond the limo getting lifted clean off the road and that drill thing coming in through the roof?” she asked.  
  
“I remember the gas being pumped in,” Mendelawitz said. “After that, nothing.”  
  
“How did they get through the ceramalloy armour on the car?” Jones wondered aloud.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Alban said. “They got through, and they’ve got the Chief. And us, for what it’s worth,” she added. “Al, how come this never happened to you when you were Anderson’s security coordinator?”  
  
“Never found the time, I suppose,” Jones said. “Don’t expect any sympathy from me. You knew this sort of thing could happen when you took the job.” She made restless progress around the perimeter of the small room. It was barely three metres by three metres. The door, predictably, was locked. There were no fixtures beyond a standard light fitting in the ceiling, not even a bucket or a bottle of water for the prisoners. The wall panels were metal, apparently made from brushed stainless steel or whatever the Spectran equivalent was, and there was a very quiet low level thrum to be felt through them. “We appear to be on a rather sticky wicket,” Jones opined thoughtfully.  
  
“Really?” Alban drawled. “You don’t say.”  
  
Jones didn’t bother responding but gazed up at the ceiling, then put her hands on her hips and considered the door. It appeared to be the only access point. She took a deep breath of cold, sterile air. “Right,” she muttered, almost to herself, and marched up to the door. She pounded on it. “Hallo! Is there anyone there?” she called.  
  
Mendelawitz glanced at Alban, who shrugged.  
  
There was a clunk, and the door opened a crack. A masked face peered around the corner, along with the muzzle of a rifle. “Quiet in there!” the guard growled.  
  
Jones sidestepped so that she could see past him. “I don’t suppose, old chap,” she said, “you’ve seen my hat anywhere?”  
  
The guard goggled at her, then burst out laughing. “Stupid Earthling!” he told her.  
  
“It’s a garrison-style uniform hat,” Jones persisted. “Dark blue with silver trim and the Galaxy Security crest on the front. It’s got my name written on the inside.”  
  
“Don’t give me trouble,” the guard told her.  
  
“I should very much like it back, because without it, I’m out of uniform, you see.”  
  
“Shut up and keep quiet!” the guard snapped, and sneered as he pulled the door toward him.  
  
_“What about my hat?”_ Jones demanded as the door slammed shut.  
  
“How many?” Alban asked.  
  
“Just the one. In a companionway of some kind. He’s armed with a Mordith assault rifle.”  
  
“So, one of them, armed, versus three of us, unarmed,” Alban said. “Sounds fair.”  
  
“Unless you take IQ into consideration,” Jones said, “in which case they’re hopelessly outnumbered.”  
  
“Forgive me if I stick to ballistics,” Alban said. “Then there’s this... door thing,” she pointed out, nonchalantly waving one hand at the item in question.  
  
“Yes,” Jones agreed. “Bit of a sticking point, isn’t it? Oh, well. Can’t be helped.” She fiddled with her wristwatch. There was the smallest of clicks. “Got your emergency transmitter, Shay?”  
  
“Yeah.” Alban activated the controls in her own watch.  
  
“We’ll leave mine here,” Jones said. She unfastened the strap. “Bring yours with you, in case this room’s shielded.”  
  
“Got it,” Alban said, and caught the wristwatch Jones tossed to her.  
  
“Corporal Mendelawitz, would you be so kind as to give Major Alban a boost up to the light fixture, please?” Jones requested.  
  
“Why me?” Alban asked. She got to her feet and took a deep breath.  
  
“Because you’re taller than me, and even if you weren’t, I outrank you.”  
  
“Right,” Alban sighed. Mendelawitz got down on one knee and cupped his hands together. Alban stepped up and was lifted so that she could reach the light. The diffuser came away, and she concealed the transmitter inside. “Y’know, Al,” she muttered as she replaced the diffuser, “if it makes you feel any better, none of us have our hats.”  
  
“It doesn’t, really,” Jones said absently, staring thoughtfully at the door. “You know,” she said after a moment, “it’s a rather poor show to have a guard answering a door without any backup.”  
  
  
  
Private Fhegs was not having a good day. He rarely did. With a name like Fhegs (which meant “Sees Far” in his native Falovian dialect but translated phonetically into a word that was very nearly a homophone for “petal,” in Low Spectran) he was pretty much doomed to be a laughing stock in the Spectran army. He was not especially intelligent, since especially intelligent people generally did their utmost to avoid joining the Spectran army, and he wasn’t especially skilled at anything in particular other than standing for long periods at his station, cradling an assault rifle and looking menacing.  
  
Fhegs was good at looking menacing. He had several varieties of scowl, two exceptional leers and a glower that could make his sergeant quite nervous. He’d already used a couple of his lower-level facial expressions on the stupid Earth woman who kept carrying on about her stupid hat. Officers. Always worrying about stupid things. Hats were stupid. The Spectran army had proper cultural headgear that didn’t fall off, not like the Earthlings who perched stupid little round things on their stupid heads. Earthlings were stupid.  
  
Fhegs was not pleased when he heard the noise coming from the cell where the Earthlings had been imprisoned.  
  
There was a loud thump, then another, followed by several more. Then that stupid annoying Earth woman’s voice said, “Oh, well done, Corporal, you’ve almost got it.”  
  
The Earthlings were escaping! Fhegs flung open the door and pointed his rifle, arranging his face in the most menacing snarl he could muster.  
  
Someone grabbed the stock of the rifle and pushed it upward before Fhegs could react. At the same time, the tall Earth woman’s fist hit him in the face and he saw stars. He didn’t feel the rifle being wrested from his grasp, but he felt the impact of the butt as it hit him in the forehead.  
  
He didn’t hear the subsequent shot that took out Sergeant Garzan at the guard post further up the companionway, nor was he aware of having his uniform removed a minute or two later.  
  
In fact, the skull fracture he’d sustained and the slowly building pressure in his brain ensured that Private Fhegs was never really aware of anything, ever again.  
  
  
  
“Zark just picked up signals from two locator beacons on a G-Sec emergency frequency,” Galbraith announced. “He’s uploading the details directly to the _Phoenix_ ’s nav system.”  
  
G-Force were out of the room and running before Galbraith could form the words to order them into action.  
  
Minutes later, the _Phoenix_ lifted off and powered skyward.  
  
“I’m picking up a signal,” Princess said, her expression grim. “It’s very faint and it’s not moving.”  
  
“Whose?” Mark asked.  
  
“Encoded transponder IDs belong to the Chief’s security coordinator and liaison officer.” Princess glanced up. “Shay and Al. According to the duty roster, Lieutenant Cho called in sick and Lieutenant Yelchin was going to meet the limo when they reached the Academy, so there were only the two of them, the Chief and the driver aboard. The car never made it to the Academy.”  
  
“I can’t believe Spectra just swooped in and grabbed the limousine off the highway,” Jason said. “They should never have slipped this far in through our defences!”  
  
“Well, they did, Jason,” Mark said, “and right now, all I care about is getting the Chief back. Alive and in one piece.”  
  
“Ditto,” Jason said. “I guess we’re all a little edgy, but whatever happens, Mark, I’ve got your back. Whatever has to be done.”  
  
“Thanks, Jason,” Mark said quietly.  
  
“That goes for all of us,” Princess said.  
  
Keyop frowned at his console. “There’s nothing on the scope,” he reported.  
  
Mark stabbed at the tele-comm controls. “Zark,” he snapped, “we can’t get a visual on the signal source.”  
  
7-Zark-7’s metallic visage appeared on screen. “ _They appear to be using an abandoned bunker of some kind to hide their ship. Stay on target, Commander.”_  
  
“Just so long as it’s there, Zark,” Mark said.  
  
Shortly before arriving at the emergency signal’s point of origin, Tiny Harper reduced the _Phoenix_ ’s air speed and four winged shapes tumbled free, buffeted by the slipstream of the ship, then glided like hunting hawks to the ground.  
  
The _Phoenix_ passed over the top and kept going.  
  
“Tracking the _Phoenix_ should keep Zoltar’s goons occupied,” Mark said, surveying the scene from the undergrowth.  
  
“Now to find a way in,” Jason said.  
  
“They got in,” Princess reasoned. “So can we.”  
  
“That sounds like a plan,” Jason twitted her.  
  
“Cool it,” Mark told them. “Spread out and reconnoitre. First one to find a way in, send a silent signal via your comm.”  
  
Noiselessly, G-Force dispersed.  
  
  
  
Corporal Aron was not having a good day.  
  
This was mostly because Sergeant Garzan had been shot dead then bundled into a storage compartment, there was an Earth man wearing a stolen Spectran uniform holding a purloined assault rifle way too close for comfort and the shorter of the two Earth women – the blonde one – was threatening to become unreasonable about things like loyalty and silence. The tall red-head had bound his hands and feet and was now accessing the computer.  
  
Aron’s head was throbbing from where he’d been hit with a stapler that the blonde woman had grabbed off his desk and utilised as an impromptu cosh. Everything had happened so fast, it was hard to recall the exact sequence of events.  
  
In particular, Aron was having a bad day because the blonde Earth woman had him by the shirt front and was pressing the muzzle of his own pistol rather painfully into the spot under his left ear.  
  
“Tell me where he is,” the woman growled.  
  
“You don’t scare me,” Aron said. “You’re bluffing. You Earthlings don’t have the stomach for torture.”  
  
“Al,” the red-head said.  
  
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I won’t do whatever it takes to get my Chief of Staff back,” Aron’s inquisitor said.  
  
“Al,” the tall woman said again.  
  
“If it comes down to you or him,” the blonde snarled, “I’ll take you apart piece by piece –”  
  
“Colonel,” Alban said, “I’ve got the information. The computer was still logged on.”  
  
“Right, then.” Jones lowered Aron back into his seat. “Corporal, be so good as to show this gentleman the inside of the cell we so recently vacated. And you,” she told Alban, “will stop smiling immediately.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.” Alban said meekly.  
  
  
  
The secret entrance had been well disguised. Someone had made a false rock outcrop out of concrete and fibreglass, then painted it and covered it in a mix of natural and artificial greenery.  
  
Not so well disguised was Private Herran, who was on guard duty. He was not having a good day. He had been standing in the same position for several hours, and he was getting cramps in his right foot. He was also getting the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched.  
  
A small bird flew out of the trees, wings gleaming in the sunlight. Herran barely had time to register this and reconcile it with what little he knew of Terran ornithology (that with few exceptions, most birds don’t _gleam_ , as such) before the sonic boomerang had passed within range and the signal it emitted rendered him unconscious.  
  
Four caped figures raced across the clearing to what had until very recently been a secret entrance.  
  
  
  
Doctor Shoban frowned as he heard two heavy thuds from outside the laboratory. He glanced up as the door opened and a guard marched two women into the lab. The women wore Galaxy Security uniforms and had their hands – presumably bound – behind their backs. The guard shut the door behind him and saluted.  
  
“You sent for the prisoners, sir!” the guard barked.  
  
Shoban stared at the guard in bewilderment. “No, I didn’t,” he protested.  
  
“Oh,” said the blonde prisoner, and pointed a pistol at him. “In that case, put your hands up.” The taller woman also drew a gun. The man in the soldier’s uniform opened the laboratory door and proceeded to haul the bodies of two soldiers inside. Shoban swallowed as he noticed the unnatural angle at which one of the soldiers’ head’s lolled. The other one appeared to be unconscious. The erstwhile guard pulled off his mask and locked the door. He pointed his rifle at Eghran, who remained largely oblivious behind the operator’s virtual reality visor, fingers still skittering over the keyboard.  
  
The blonde woman approached and checked the vital signs of the tall man lying restrained and unconscious on the table. She examined the steel trolley with its tray containing the syringe and used drug vial, and picked up the pair of spectacles that lay there. Her gaze took in the intravenous cannula still taped to the back of one of the prisoner’s hands and she clenched her teeth as she looked over the VR helmet that obscured most of his face. She stared at the spectacles in her left hand and took a deep breath.  
  
“What have you done to him?” she asked. Her voice had a dangerously quiet, calm quality that made Shoban start to perspire. It was the sort of quiet calm that in his experience was a fairly good indicator that something had snapped.  
  
“He’s sedated and restrained while he experiences an artificial reality,” Shoban said, electing for honesty under duress. “Eghran here is manipulating the neuro-narrative input from our end.”  
  
“Make him stop,” the woman said. She struck Shoban as the brittle type: it wasn’t the brittleness of a dry twig, but more the brittleness of very thin glass, the sort that shatters under pressure. The trouble with glass, Shoban knew, was that when it did break in this fashion, someone invariably ended up bleeding. Given the situation, Shoban was fairly certain that if there was going to be bleeding, he was a very likely candidate for it.  
  
“I can’t just make him stop,” Shoban said. “It’s not as simple –” He shrieked and jumped as a bullet slammed into the footing of the cabinet just next to his ankle.  
  
Eghran finally seemed to realise that he needed to be paying attention. He swivelled his chair toward Shoban and tilted the visor upward. “He’s resisting - Oh, _ignots_. It’s you...” He swallowed, staring at the blonde woman. “ _You_! You’re... you’re...”  
  
“Holding a gun,” the woman said. “Aimed at your boss. I could aim it at you if you like.”  
  
“ _Abort_ , Eghran,” Shoban said.  
  
“I think you should know,” the woman said, “that I’m _really_ annoyed.” The muzzle of the gun moved until it pointed at the centre of Shoban’s chest.  
  
“Al,” the tall woman began, one hand extending toward her colleague, “we may need him alive.”  
  
“I will not tolerate anything less than full and immediate compliance with my orders,” the blonde woman said, ignoring the warning. “Do I make myself quite clear?”  
  
“Yes,” Shoban said. He turned, shaking, to the technician. “Eghran. Abort. Now.”  
  
“The next time I fire a warning shot,” Jones remarked, “I might not miss. You see, I’m rapidly going from being really annoyed to quite extraordinarily angry and my hands seem to be shaking rather a lot.”  
  
“It takes time to close this off,” Eghran said. “If I just shut the programme down, he could have a psychotic break. He’s resisting, somehow. The first scenario, there was the usual disquiet. I dealt with that, but the second one... he’s got something happening at subconscious level. I can’t access it –”  
  
“Do what you have to do to wake him up _safely_ ,” Jones said. “Whatever happens to him, _I will do to you_.”  
  
Eghran took a deep breath. “There’s stimulant in the cabinet,” he said. “Doctor Shoban will have to administer it while I bring him out of the simulation.”  
  
“Doctor Shoban will stay exactly where he is,” the woman said. “I’ll take care of Doctor Anderson. If I think you’re trying to call for help, or do him any harm, there will be consequences. Watch them, Major, and if they try anything, shoot them. Don’t kill them, just go for painful. Corporal, watch the door.” She activated the safety catch on her weapon, tucked the gun into the waistband of her trousers then turned to lean over Anderson. She squeezed his shoulders. “Can you hear me?” she asked. “Wherever you are, come back.”  
  
  
  
“You’re doing well,” Alberta said as Anderson stood up in the darkness of his subconscious, looking for bullet wounds in his intact torso.  
  
“Okay, I could have sworn I just took about half a dozen bullets,” Anderson said.  
  
“Convincing, wasn’t it?” Alberta pointed out. “Yes, keep thinking, David, you’re almost there.”  
  
“None of this is real,” he said. “But why can’t I remember what _is_ real? Why is this happening?”  
  
“Sorry. I can only tell you what you already know at some level, and you don’t have the answer to that one.”  
  
“Oh, that’s right. You’re a manifestation of my subconscious mind. Are we actually married?”  
  
“Oh, please! I’m not stupid enough to say yes even if you were stupid enough to ask!”  
  
“Ow.” Anderson folded his arms. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”  
  
“This is you being brutally honest with yourself. You’re not just bad at relationships, David. Your problem is that you don’t put the effort in. You think relationships just happen by themselves. You might be a genius but in some ways, you’re incredibly thick.”  
  
A wave of nausea made Anderson sway on his feet.  
  
“Now _that’s_ real,” Alberta said.  
  
“What’s happening?” Anderson demanded.  
  
“I think you’re waking up,” Alberta said. She walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Wherever you are, come back.”  
  
Anderson felt reality go, “ _Pop!_ ” and the universe – what he could make out of it, anyway – vanished.  
  
  
  
“It’s more efficient than torture,” Shoban explained miserably, his focus fixed morbidly on the pistol Shay Alban was pointing at him. “Less messy. We use a combination of drugs, suggestion and electrical impulses to stimulate the brain into constructing an ideal emotional environment for itself, then we destroy that environment using something traumatic. We don’t have to trick the subject: they provide all the details from their own subconscious. Then we do it again and again, building and destroying realities until the subject doesn’t know whether they’re awake or dreaming... After that, we offer an emotional and conceptual anchor and bring them out of it. They emerge from the procedure completely confused about what’s real and what isn’t. We can have the most reticent individual reduced to compliance within a week. They don’t resist. They tell us everything we want to know.”  
  
Jones remained silent, simply staring at Anderson in a kind of numb horror.  
  
Alban, on the other hand, stared at Shoban in a kind of numb horror. “And just how,” she asked, “did you develop this... _procedure_?”  
  
“Look,” Shoban said, “I’m not a monster. I’m a doctor. The programme was originally developed as experimental therapy for post-traumatic patients, but Lord Zoltar made us adapt it. Eghran and I were both ordered to work on this project or face Lord Zoltar’s wrath. Lord Zoltar...”  
  
“Is not a nice person. Yeah, I get that,” Alban said, without sympathy. “It just so happens, Chief Anderson isn’t a particularly nice person either. When he wakes up, he’s going to be boiling mad, and the first person he’s going to be boiling mad with is _you_.”  
  
“We were trying to _help_ people!” Shoban protested. “The virtual environment was supposed to be a kind of lucid dream where the patient could regain a sense of control to help them cope with the flashbacks and the nightmares. When Lord Zoltar learned of our work…”  
  
“Yeah, you’re just a poor little victim,” Alban snarled. “I’d play the galaxy’s smallest violin for ya, but my hands are full at the moment.”  
  
“We were sent to Planet Riga a few months ago. There were people Lord Zoltar wanted information from: people he hadn’t been able to break.” Shoban swallowed. “He provided the test subjects.”  
  
“Prisoners,” Alban inferred.  
  
“Yes,” Shoban affirmed, still unable to look away from the gun. “We had no choice.”  
  
Jones was standing in front of a cabinet bearing the Spectran symbol for medical supplies. She had opened the door and rummaged among the contents before extracting a small ampoule. She read the label twice before walking over to Shoban and holding it up. “How much? Think _very_ carefully about your answer.”  
  
“The entire amp,” Shoban said. “A man his size, I’d even give him point five mill more, but it’s safer to go with the lower dose. See how he reacts and then give more if he needs it. I’m telling you the truth.”  
  
“So am I,” Jones said. “If he dies, so do you. And I promise you I won’t make it quick.”  
  
Jones returned to the cabinet, prepared a syringe and inserted the tip into the cannula taped to the back of Anderson’s hand. Slowly, she depressed the plunger. When she was done, she removed the syringe and re-capped the cannula.  
  
Jones glanced over her shoulder at Eghran. “Well?” she demanded.  
  
“Done!” he said.  
  
“Right then,” Jones said, and pulled the virtual reality interface helmet from Anderson’s head.  



	4. I'll Always Come Back

Electrodes tore free and Anderson’s body stiffened convulsively against the restraints. His eyes flew open and he gasped, staring without seeing.  
  
He became aware of the hard surface on which he was lying, registered that he was held in place, recognised the harsh smell of surgical spirit and... _Perfume?_ It was a familiar scent whose name he didn’t know, but his memory made a connection and latched onto it. He blinked furiously, willing his vision to clear. There was the distinctive ripping sound of Velcro being pulled apart and he was able to move his arms and legs. Someone raised him to a sitting position. The world was a blur beyond anything his glasses might have corrected. He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear it.  
  
“We have to get out of here,” said a familiar voice that went with the scent. Edges like that were usually found on broken bottles. “I know you’re probably not feeling the best, sir, but you’re going to have to stand up, now.” Something thin and hard was pressed into his hand: his spectacles.  
  
Anderson took a deep breath to try and dispel the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Three streams of memory flowed over one another and struggled for integrity against a tide of confusion. He was trying to negotiate a maze made up of scattered pieces from three similar yet disparate jigsaw puzzles.  
  
Ally – no, _Lieutenant Colonel Jones_ and _he_ was the Chief of Galaxy Security, on his way to deliver a speech at the Academy, only this didn’t look like the assembly hall at the Academy – had an arm around him, supporting him. The warmth of her was intense compared to the cold air and the table he was on.  
  
“I promised I’d come back,” he mumbled.  
  
“You can promise to respect me in the morning as long as you wake up and focus!” Jones snapped at him. “Don’t make me slap you, sir. It’s such a hideous cliché and there’s the whole ‘striking a superior officer’ thing that I’d like to avoid if I can.”  
  
“Since you put it that way,” Anderson managed to say. He put his spectacles on and grimaced. “What’s our situation?” he asked.  
  
Major Alban had removed the cover from Eghran’s computer. She fired her pistol into the hard drive at point blank range. Sparks and pieces of hard drive flew.  
  
“I think _cause for concern_ would be a fairly good description for it, sir,” Jones said. “I do hope you can walk, because staying here isn’t an option.”  
  
There was a soft crackle and hiss from the comm console. “Uh-oh,” Alban said, as the wall mounted comm unit video screen lit up and resolved itself into an image of a face mostly concealed by a purple mask.  
  
_“Doctor Shoban, how are – Aha! I see the hired help has been quite resourceful,_ ” Zoltar observed. _“I shall soon take care of that!”_ The screen went black.  
  
“We’re sprung,” Alban said.  
  
“Aw, rats,” said Mendelawitz. “Y’know, ma’am, this isn’t what I expected when I joined the motor pool.”  
  
“Lucky you,” Alban drawled. “Not everybody gets a free ride aboard a Spectra ship.”  
  
An alarm began to sound.  
  
“Oh, _bugger_ ,” Jones said. “This is turning out to be a really bad day.”  
  
Anderson turned so that he could swing his legs down to the ground then eased his weight down onto his feet and took a try at standing unaided. He stumbled and nearly fell. Jones caught him and almost collapsed under him. Once Jones had managed to right them both, Anderson gritted his teeth and started to stagger toward the door. “Yep,” he said. “This is a really bad day all right. Let’s see if we can spread it around some.”  
  
  
  
Mark motioned to his team and G-Force shrank into shadows as a squad of soldiers ran past. The shriek of an alarm echoed down the companionway.  
  
“Looks like they could be in a hurry to get to a party,” Princess said, _sotto voce_. “And for once, we’re not the ones issuing invitations.”  
  
“I hate to miss a good party, don’t you?” Jason responded in kind.  
  
“Wanna gate-crash?” Keyop suggested.  
  
“Let’s,” Mark decided.  
  
They followed, ghosting down the companionway from alcove to intersection.  
  
  
  
Shoban and Eghran did as they were told and remained silent as they were hustled out of the lab. Corporal Mendelawitz kept them covered while Jones led the way, gun at the ready. Anderson, still groggy, relied on Alban for support.  
  
“Why me?” Alban had hissed when given her orders.  
  
“Because you’re taller than me, and even if you weren’t, I outrank you,” Jones had hissed back.  
  
“Let me take point, Al,” Alban offered. “You’re stressing out.”  
  
“This isn’t stress, Shay, this is sheer bloody fury. Given time, I might be able to think of a time I’ve been angrier, but right now, I can’t call anything to mind,” Jones said. “I’m on point. I really need someone to kill.”  
  
Anderson forced his leaden feet to move. Still groggy from the cocktail of psychotropic drugs Shoban had administered, he was dimly aware that someone had been trying to manipulate him from inside his own head. Conflicting realities jostled for precedence.  
  
The one where he was being half-dragged down a corridor by a truculent security officer asserted itself with some authority.  
  
There was a shout ahead, several sharp retorts of gunfire, and he was hauled sideways then shoved to the ground. Running footsteps, thuds and a couple of pained grunts heralded the unceremonious arrival of Shoban and Eghran. He looked around. They were in some kind of service area, with equipment in various stages of repair on work benches. There were no other personnel in the room. Presumably, they’d responded to the alarm he could still hear ringing through the... ship? Base? The floor offered up a clue in the form of a low-level vibration. Gravity felt like Earth-normal, and the fit-out seemed to suggest a ship. Application of logic. Good. Anderson took mental stock: everything seemed to be working, more or less. Now if he could only get past the feeling that someone had filled his skull with syrup and do something about the mixed-up jigsaw puzzle pieces, he’d be making progress. A memory crystallised: the limousine banging and lurching as clamps locked into position around it; some kind of drill penetrating the roof; a stream of white mist; struggling uselessly to remain conscious, then nothing. Whatever they’d done to him, it had been convincing. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t a civilian.  
  
Jones dropped to one knee next to him, gun at the ready. “They’ll have us pinned within a couple of minutes,” she predicted. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look good. Sorry, sir.”  
  
Anderson nodded silently. Jones glared, steely eyed and grim, at the door through which bullets and men would soon come charging. “Ally,” Anderson said without thinking.  
  
“Don’t call me Ally,” Jones said automatically. “It makes me sound like a blonde. Sir,” she added.  
  
“They mustn’t take me alive,” Anderson said, deciding to overlook the obvious.  
  
She turned to him and met his gaze. Her mouth was a thin, bloodless line. “Understood, sir.” This was real. But was it even worth trying to reassemble the puzzle? In a few minutes, he would give Jones the order. She would obey and put a bullet in his head. She and the others would follow him within seconds.  
  
“They’re all dead,” Anderson whispered as the realisation hit him. It felt like being punched in the stomach.  
  
“Who’s dead?” Jones was frowning.  
  
“Jay, Erin. Marsh... They’re all dead.”  
  
Jones swallowed and he watched as she composed herself. “Sir,” she said, “it’s the year twenty-one sixty-three. You’re David Anderson, Chief of Galaxy Security. We’ve been captured. You underwent some kind of experimental procedure. Doctor Frankenstein and Igor over here sent you to La-La Land with the shiny happy pixie people but you’re awake now. This is real. We’re aboard a Spectra ship and our position is about to be overrun. We all know too much to allow ourselves to be taken again, but before we die, we’re going to do our duty and take as many of the enemy with us as we can.”  
  
Anderson studied the hard-eyed woman next to him. “You’re real.”  
  
“Yes, sir. Have been for a while now, sir.”  
  
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Eghran said.  
  
“Everything dies, friend,” Alban said. “It’s just a matter of when.”  
  
“But in our case,” Jones said, “it’s highly likely that it’ll happen in the very near future. And me without my hat.”  
  
Outside, in the companionway, there was an odd, high pitched whining noise and several men shouted in alarm.  
  
Anderson brightened. “I know that sound,” he said.  
  
“Are we about to be rescued in the nick of time, sir?” Jones inferred.  
  
“I believe we are, Colonel.”  
  
“Right then. All the more reason to provide supporting fire.” Jones took aim and shot at a Spectran who ran into the room. The soldier’s demeanour, up to the point where Jones’ bullets killed him, was that of a man fleeing rather than attacking. His automatic rifle went off as he fell, spraying bullets into the ceiling, then it clattered to the floor and slid toward Shoban.  
  
Anderson pounced on the rifle, his movement bringing him within inches of the Spectran scientist. Anderson realised he was looking into the face of the man who had put him through the nightmare he’d experienced today. He thought about saying something – possibly with a fist – but settled for a hostile glare.  
  
Shoban whimpered and shrank away from him.  
  
The Spectrans were at a disadvantage: the doorway made them targets for the people inside the maintenance bay, and the companionway made them targets for G-Force.  
  
Anderson’s head had cleared enough now that he was able to use the rifle to take effective shots at passing soldiers.  
  
“I’d say we’ve definitely found them,” he heard Jason say as another soldier fell.  
  
Another voice – Mark, this time, called out, “Is that you, Chief?”  
  
“That’s not an easy question to answer,” Anderson muttered.  
  
“We’re all here, Commander!” Jones called back. She gave Anderson a rueful look. “But some of us might not be all there,” she murmured.  
  
Anderson exhaled and felt his face relax into a smile. “You’re definitely real,” he said.  
  
  
  
Mark caught his boomerang as it returned to his hand and smiled grimly. “Princess,” he said into his communicator, “we’ve located the Chief. How are you and Keyop doing with the power plant?”  
  
_“We’ve found it,”_ Princess’s whispered reply came back. _“Give us a few minutes to secure the area.”_   
  
“The sooner the better,” Mark said. He took aim and cast the boomerang again.  
  
The low but steady thrum that had been present changed. There was a gentle shudder as thrusters were brought on-line and a ripple of awareness flowed through crew, escapees and rescuers alike.  
  
  
  
In the maintenance bay, Anderson saw a dark cape wing flicker across the doorway. This was followed by a glimpse of a helmeted head.  
  
“Hold your fire!” Anderson ordered. The Galaxy Security contingent scrambled to their feet and hauled their prisoners upright as Jason sauntered into the maintenance bay.  
  
“How’s everyone doing?” Jason asked.  
  
Alban made a face. “Are we having fun, yet?” she asked.  
  
“Can’t you tell?” Jason parried. He turned serious and nodded toward Shoban and Eghran. “Are we taking Bugs and Daffy here with us?”  
  
“Yes,” Anderson said. “It’s either that or kill them and interrogation could be problematic if they’re dead.”  
  
“Then let’s move.” Jason led them into a corridor strewn with bodies. “Mark just left to have a talk with Zoltar,” he explained. “You know, he wanted to let the purple guy know how we felt about this whole abduction thing and share a little of the love.”  
  
“I’d prefer Zoltar alive if possible,” Anderson said, while Jones and Alban acquired fresh rifles and ammunition from the fallen Spectrans.  
  
“The Skipper was in a pretty bad mood,” Jason recalled.  
  
“So am I,” Anderson said. “I’m not going to insist on Zoltar being brought in _unharmed_.”  
  
The ship shuddered again, and moved.  
  
“We’re lifting off,” Jason said.  
  
“That’s not a good thing, right?” Mendelawitz inferred.  
  
“Not while we’re still on the ship, no,” Jason said.  
  
  
  
The once-secret entrance to the bunker where the Spectran badger ship lurked shook as its façade fell outward, dislodging soil and vegetation as it did so. A blast of deflected exhaust gases preceded the forequarters of the badger, which edged its way out of its hiding place at a slow but steady pace.  
  
Aboard the _Phoenix_ , Tiny was already turning the G-Force command ship in a tight arc, his attention divided between flying the ship and acknowledging Mark’s transmission “ _– Don’t let it take off_!” Mark finished.  
  
“On my way,” Tiny said. He increased thrust and accelerated toward the Spectra ship. The altimeter reading dropped as the _Phoenix_ plunged earthward.  
  
The badger was a few metres off the ground and slowly rising in a clumsy near-vertical climb in an effort to clear the tree-line.  
  
Tiny activated the air-to-air rocket launcher. “Mark wants you grounded,” Tiny muttered to the badger’s ever-growing image on his screen, “and that seems like a good idea to me.” He touched the computer targeting control, which chattered to itself for a moment then flashed red and emitted a harsh beep. Tiny hit the firing button and two small rockets streaked away from the _Phoenix_ ’s ventral hatch.  
  
The first rocket destroyed a small clump of trees. The second hit the badger’s engine exhaust and bloomed orange and black fire.  
  
  
  
Princess and Keyop picked themselves up from the floor where they’d been thrown and glanced back to see the engine room billowing smoke.  
  
“A little more warning would have been nice, Commander!” Princess complained into her communicator. “We almost got cooked!” She brushed some soot off the back of her skirt.  
  
_“A miss is as good as a mile, Princess,_ ” came Mark’s reply.  
  
“A miss –? Ooh!” Princess cut off her retort with a soft growl. “Come on, Keyop, let’s meet up with the others.”  
  
  
  
Mark burst into the control room in time to see a figure in a purple cloak vanish through a hatch. He lunged after it, caught the hatch as it began to swing closed and flung it open. He leapt through the gap and hit the floor running.  
  
Zoltar, _sans_ cape, got up from behind the command chair and ran in the other direction.  
  
It only took Mark around three and a half seconds to notice that his quarry’s feet were in standard issue boots under regular Spectra uniform trousers, but that was all Zoltar needed for a good head start.  
  
  
  
The ship had landed untidily back among the trees. Most of the crew were in the process of abandoning her. A few die-hard loyalists, however, had decided to stand and fight.  
  
Jason was changing their minds. Along with various other body parts.  
  
“Remind me never to annoy him,” Corporal Mendelawitz said, watching from behind the safety of a bulkhead. Shoban and Eghran cowered at his feet.  
  
“I think,” Jones said, keeping a lookout in the other direction, “that the thing that annoys him most is if you’re the enemy and shooting at him.”  
  
“I can probably avoid that,” Mendelawitz said. The driver had shucked the purloined Spectra uniform tunic to reveal the dark blue standard-issue t-shirt that he usually wore under his G‑Sec uniform and cradled an assault rifle to his chest. The cold air of the ship had raised gooseflesh on the exposed skin of his forearms but Mendelawitz preferred the cold to being mistaken for anyone who might annoy Jason.  
  
At the sound of running feet, the Galaxy Security contingent raised their weapons then lowered them again when Princess and Keyop rounded the corner.  
  
“Where’s Mark?” Princess asked.  
  
“He went to find Zoltar,” Anderson said.  
  
“Has anyone noticed that this ship took a hit in the power plant?” Princess asked.  
  
Anderson frowned. “How long before it blows?”  
  
“I give it about five or six minutes,” Princess said. “Tops.”  
  
“I see,” Anderson said.  
  
There was a lurch and a thump as another detonation rocked the ship.  
  
  
  
Mark had heard and read about ‘a red film of rage’ misting the vision but he’d never experienced it himself. Instead of a red mist, everything seemed almost preternaturally clear as Mark ran. He was focussed on his quarry and his hands itched to close around Zoltar’s throat. His arms and legs worked, boosted by his cerebonic implants and the adrenaline that coursed through his body. Mark was gaining on Zoltar, but it was becoming apparent to him that he wasn’t going to catch the tall alien in time, and some sensor or other had activated an automatic door which opened in front of Zoltar like a mechanical iris. Mark’s hand closed around his sonic boomerang and he hurled it ahead of him even as Zoltar jumped like a hurdler, hardly breaking stride to get through the partially opened hatchway. The gate began to close and the boomerang glanced harmlessly off the armoured metal.  
  
The iris plates sealed even as Mark flung himself against them, out of breath and full of fury. Mark picked up his boomerang and gritted his teeth as he felt the door vibrate with the rocket blast of a departing escape capsule.  
  
Such a simple trick, and he’d fallen for it. He threw himself against the door and roared in inarticulate rage.  
  
His bracelet was chirping. “ _Mark! Come in!”_ Princess called.  
  
He raised his wrist: “Report.”  
  
It was Jason who responded: _“Princess says the engines are going to blow. We’re getting everyone aboard the_ Phoenix _. Care to join us?”_  
  
“On my way,” Mark said. “Tiny, do you copy?”  
  
“ _I’m already holding station over the top, Commander,”_ Tiny said, _“and there’s air and ground support on the way to round up Zoltar’s happiness boys. An escape capsule just missed taking out the port wing pod. Was that our favourite Spectran?”_  
  
“Tell you about it later, Tiny!”   
  
Mark ran.  
  
The alarm he’d been hearing for so long that he’d filtered it out of his immediate awareness echoed down empty companionways. Mark raced upward, taking every available ladder, following the emergency exit indicators, not bothering to climb when he could leap, never walking but always running. He found a hatch that opened onto the dorsal surface of the badger ship and saw the _Phoenix_ hovering above. The belly hatch was open and Jason was crouched over the cable ladder, which was hanging at its full length.  
  
Detonations began to rock the alien ship and Mark leapt, hands outstretched, fingers clawing for the bottom rungs of the ladder. He caught hold of the ladder with an armpit-wrenching jolt and hung on. As the _Phoenix_ commenced her ascent, Mark climbed while Jason hauled the ladder up.  
  
Behind and below, the badger ship exploded. Mark pulled himself up and forward. Jason’s hand closed around his right wrist and G-Force’s second-in-command hauled his commander bodily into the belly of the _Phoenix_. Mark stumbled and fell to his knees as heat roiled up through the open hatchway and debris hit the hull. The ship lurched with the shockwave and Mark sat down gracelessly, took a deep breath of sooty air and choked. He coughed violently, going red in the face. Air exchange fans activated and cold, clean air rushed into the airlock chamber.  
  
“You okay?” Jason asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Mark gasped, and spat carbon. _“Ptah!”_ He let himself fall flat on his back and breathed deeply.  
  
“Show off,” Jason said. He activated the control to close the belly hatch and walked away.  
  
“Nice to see you, too, pal,” Mark grumbled, and picked himself up off the floor, limbs trembling in the aftermath of extreme effort. He double-checked that the belly hatch was secure, then followed Jason to the bridge.  
  
  
  
The _Phoenix_ was not designed for carrying prisoners. She was designed for taking her crew to the far-flung metaphorical corners of the galaxy and for dealing with enemy attack ships, both at home and in metaphorical corners.  
  
Her designers however, had taken into account the possibility that the G-Force command ship might occasionally need to carry the odd unwilling passenger.  
  
As such, Shoban and Eghran found themselves occupying a non-metaphorical corner of the ship’s small but functional hold. A wall panel housed fold-out acceleration couches which could be fitted with securely anchored restraints. The couches, with restraints duly fitted, housed Shoban and Eghran.  
  
“We’re going to have to spend the entire journey like this?” Shoban exclaimed, outraged.  
  
Security Chief Anderson leaned against the wall in a manner he hoped looked more casual than it did necessary, since moving around had set his head to swimming again. He fixed Shoban with a stare that had a psychological effect similar to a railway spike and a sledgehammer. “I’d like you to imagine,” Anderson said conversationally, “just how annoyed I am at what’s happened to me today.”  
  
Shoban swallowed.  
  
“Then,” Anderson continued, “I’d like you – in the interests of accuracy – to multiply that by a factor of, oh, let’s call it ten to the third power. Then, I’d like you to consider just how much _more_ annoyed I’ll be if you give me any trouble, add that to what you came up with earlier, and use the result as a basis for calculating _whether or not it’s worth it_.”  
  
“This’ll be fine,” Shoban squeaked.  
  
“I had a feeling you’d be reasonable,” Anderson said. He straightened up and swayed slightly.  
  
“I think,” Jones said, catching Anderson’s arm and relieving him of the assault rifle he was still carrying, “we should go up to sickbay and see if Lieutenant Harper’s got any coffee in the emergency rations, don’t you, sir?”  
  
“Emergency coffee?” Anderson recovered himself enough to give his liaison officer a look of pure disgust. “That’s only marginally less offensive than the stuff you make.” Some memories were indelible and incorruptible.  
  
“That’s the ticket, sir,” Jones said cheerfully. “Keep looking on the bright side. Major Alban, we’re going to sickbay. Corporal Mendelawitz, you have charge of the prisoners.”  
  
Once the hatch had closed behind Anderson and Jones, Shoban shifted slightly in his seat, seeking a more comfortable position. He offered up a nervous smile at Shay Alban. “Your colleagues seem somewhat… hostile,” he ventured.  
  
Major Alban fixed the scientist with an unflinching stare. “Ya think? There’s something you need to understand about my colleague,” she said. “If you’ve hurt Security Chief Anderson – _really_ hurt him – she’ll see to it that you regret it for the rest of your miserable lives. But know this, Doctor Frankenstein: of the two of us, _she’s the nice one._ ” Alban nodded to Mendelawitz. “Call me if you need anything, Corp.” She turned on her heel and headed for the _Phoenix_ ’s small sickbay.  
  
  
  
Mark could hear voices as he approached the tiny sickbay of the _Phoenix_. He nodded to Shay Alban who was leaning against a bulkhead in the companionway.  
  
“What _is_ this?” Anderson was demanding.  
  
“You said you didn’t want emergency coffee,” Jones replied wearily.  
  
“This clearly isn’t coffee.”  
  
Mark smiled. If the Chief was complaining about the coffee, things couldn’t be all that bad.  
  
“If you must know, it’s instant tea. Why do you think I’m drinking water?”  
  
“But you gave me... _this_.”  
  
“You need something hot. Just drink it, will you? Sir.”  
  
Mark lounged in the hatchway and chuckled. “All complaints should be addressed to my superior – oh, wait. That would be you.”  
  
Anderson, propped up on the narrow sickbay bunk, handed the offending cup to Jones, who took it and set it aside.   
  
Jones inclined her head slightly toward Mark. “Thanks for the rescue, Commander. I’ll let you two talk.” Mark stepped aside to allow Jones to slip past him, then approached the bunk.  
  
“You gave us all a scare,” he said. “Another one. It’s getting to be a habit.”  
  
“Zoltar seems to be playing the man and not the ball,” Anderson agreed. “I must have really ticked him off.”  
  
Mark let himself fall into the acceleration couch beside the sickbay bed. “I almost had him. I wanted to kill him. Before today I’ve wanted to arrest him... do it by the book, y’know? Drag him before a tribunal, watch him found guilty then applaud as they lead him away to rot in prison, but today... I had murder in my heart today.”  
  
“Then maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t catch him,” Anderson said.  
  
“How do you figure that?” Mark asked. “He’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of people!”  
  
“And if somebody told me I could stop it all by letting you sell your soul, Mark, I’d say no.”  
  
“He has to be stopped, Dad.”  
  
“I know, but not at that high a price.”  
  
Mark leaned forward, hands dangling between his knees, head bowed. “Thought you were supposed to be ruthless,” he said.  
  
“If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it,” Anderson quipped.  
  
“I’m not sure I want to buy my morality with your life,” Mark said, suddenly serious again.  
  
Anderson closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows. “Then I guess I’ll just have to knuckle under and do as I’m told.”  
  
Mark got to his feet. “I’m glad you’re okay... You _are_ okay, right?”  
  
Anderson opened his eyes and met Mark’s worried gaze. “I’m a little frayed around the edges, but I’ll recover.”  
  
“I can live with that if you can.” Mark straightened his shoulders. “I’d better get back to the bridge. We’ve got ground and air forces securing the area and we’re using the _Phoenix_ ’s scanners to help them out.”  
  
“Good work, Commander.”  
  
Mark picked up the insulated cup with its no-spill lid from the tray and pressed it into Anderson’s hands. “And just drink the darned tea, will you?” He left.  
  
  
  
Princess twisted in her seat as Mark returned to the bridge. “How is he?” she asked.  
  
“Complaining about the tea. He’ll be fine,” Mark said. “Sitrep?”  
  
Tiny shrugged. “They’re picking up the last of the stragglers. We can head home if you want or we can stay until the show’s over.”  
  
“Zoltar got away again,” Mark said, staring out at the scene below.  
  
“One day, he won’t be so lucky,” Jason said.  
  
“That’s what you always say, Jason,” Mark said.  
  
“I know. And it still holds. One day, you’ll nail him. So it wasn’t today. He lost his ship, his crew’s headed for prison and we got the Chief back. Zoltar lost.”  
  
“I guess. Take us home, Tiny.”  
  
“Big ten, Commander,” the pilot replied, and opened the throttles. The _Phoenix_ ’s engines roared and the big ship turned gracefully onto a westward heading.  
  



	5. Epilogue: The Next Best Thing

Banes come in an assortment of shapes and sizes.  
  
There are banes of lives, banes of ages, banes of existences, banes of occupations and banes of time frames, right down to banes of moments.  
  
Over a period of some weeks, David Anderson, Chief of Galaxy Security (he kept reminding himself) had dealt with several banes of varying degrees, not the least of which had been a tendency to wake up and wonder not only where he was, but _who_ he was. His natural guardedness and disinclination to talk to either the psychiatrist or the psychologist hadn’t helped. It was all very well for him to tell himself that it was for his own good, but was the him he was listening to really him? Then the wrong number of inner voices kept asking precisely whose own good were we dealing with here, anyway? The disorientation had subsided now and he hadn’t found himself drifting off into fugue for a good eight days straight. The waking dreams had stopped but he continued to dream vividly at night, reliving fragments of the virtual reality his own mind had been tricked into creating. Thankfully, the Alberta Jones manifestation of his subconscious had not returned since he’d awoken in Shoban’s lab and the only version he’d had to deal with had been the one who complained that her replacement uniform hat didn’t fit as well as the old one had.  
  
He’d taken to physical activity: running, swimming and taking out his frustrations on the punching bag in Camp Parker’s well-appointed gymnasium, both to vent and to focus. When his body protested at being pushed through barrier after barrier, it left its owner in little doubt as to what was real.  
  
Here he was, surveying the results, getting to know himself a little better as he pounded back up the path from the lake, having been for a run around the shore. He was getting better at running: yesterday he’d made Jones, a regular runner who usually outpaced him easily, work to keep up with him. Today, he’d outdistanced the two lieutenants on his security detail with very little effort. He stopped as he reached the top of the incline and turned to look out over Lake Conway, whose waters glittered in the coppery light of incipient sunset.  
  
Anderson took a deep breath. The air at Camp Parker always had a unique piquancy to it: a combination of pine, decaying plant matter and the quiet nuance of duck poop where the local waterbirds liked to feed on the shore of the lake. The biggest bane he had to deal with at this very moment was the way his prescription sunglasses kept trying to slide down his nose. He took them off and the world went out of focus. He allowed himself to be aware of the feel of slightly uneven ground underneath the soles of his running shoes, and spent a moment just being himself. He took stock. No nagging doubts, no odd little anomalies, memories all sorted out and in the right order. He put the sunglasses in one pocket of his sweat pants and took his ordinary glasses out. The spectacle-juggling act was a minor bane shared by millions, and one he found comforting in its ordinariness. It occurred to him that to his enemies, his continuing existence constituted a rather sizeable bane. He allowed himself a very small smile of satisfaction at the thought.  
  
Lieutenants Bairstow and Falcone came up the path at a laboured jog. Falcone the smoker was breathing heavily. Anderson ignored them both as they passed him. He heard Bairstow prostrate himself on the grass and groan, while Falcone paced in a wide circle, wheezing as he cooled down.  
  
Anderson put his glasses on.  
  
An occasional shout was being picked up and carried by the wind from the lakeshore where Mark and Tiny were helping Keyop fly a yellow kite while Princess and Jason tidied away the remains of a picnic. Mark looked up toward the house and waved, his demeanour carefree and happy.  
  
It wasn’t a traditional family, but it was quite possibly the next best thing.  
  
After a moment of filtering out the Bairstow and Falcone noises, Anderson felt, rather than heard another familiar tread behind him. He turned slightly as Jones stopped at his right and looked out over Lake Conway. She was carrying a bottle of Gatorade and a mug of tea.  
  
“Nice to see you standing still for a change, sir,” she said, and handed him the bottle. It was slippery with condensation from being in the refrigerator.  
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be off duty?” he said, twisting the cap off the bottle.  
  
“I didn’t have anything better to do. I thought I’d check and make sure you hadn’t fallen in the lake or anything. Doctor Galbraith called. Wanted to know if you were sane, yet.”  
  
“What did you tell him?” Anderson asked, guessing what the answer would be.  
  
“Told him you were mad as a box of frogs, sir.”  
  
“Oh, thanks.”  
  
“You’re welcome, sir.”  
  
They drank in silence for a moment and stared at the lake.  
  
“Al,” Anderson said, “do you ever wonder what life might have been like if you’d made a different set of choices?”  
  
Jones studied the contents of her tea mug for a long moment. “I think,” she said, “that the two saddest words in our language are ‘if only.’” She looked out over the lake, not meeting Anderson’s gaze. “There’s not much point in brooding over might-have-beens. There aren’t any do-overs. I learned that the hard way when Harry died. Lots of regrets and not a damned thing I could do about them. We can’t change the past. We can only look to the future and hope that we’ve learned from our mistakes.”  
  
“You’re right. Thanks, Al. I can always rely on you when I need a dose of perspective.”  
  
Jones took a sip of her tea and cast a jaundiced eye over the two weary security officers. “Do you call this a protection detail, Lieutenants?”  
  
Bairstow struggled to his feet. “Colonel, we just sprinted around Lake Conway!” he protested.  
  
“ _And_?” Jones prompted, the single syllable slicing into the air like a serrated blade.  
  
“And... well...”  
  
“You were lying down on the job, Lieutenant.”  
  
“Sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again, ma’am.”  
  
“I’ve seen things growing on cheese, Bairstow, that looked more dangerous than you do right now.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“I have the watch, Lieutenants. Both of you hit the showers and be back here in no more than fifteen minutes, in uniform and fit to resume your duties. Make no mistake, Major Alban’s going to hear of this.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am!”  
  
The two junior officers scrambled to comply. Anderson watched them go and waited until they were well out of earshot to speak. “Do you think you might have been just a little hard on them, Ally?”  
  
Jones chose to ignore the diminutive usage of her name. He’d been doing it a lot lately, but she’d chosen not to ask why. “In the first place, the cheese in question was a _very_ mature unpasteurised Lucavian blue, and in the second they’re used to me being a nasty old cow. If I changed now, someone might think I was... oh, I don’t know, _nice_ or something.”  
  
“Do you have any idea,” Anderson asked, “how reassuring it is to hear you talk like this?”  
  
Jones considered this for a moment and gave her chief of staff a genuinely blank look. “None whatsoever, sir.”  
  
“Let’s keep it that way,” he decided. “For now, anyway.”  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_fin_


End file.
